Our reporters often spend days or weeks responding to breaking news. Sometimes, we have a chance to go into more detail on important issues.
On this page, we’ve gathered 15 articles from 2025 that tried to find answers to questions that we know people care about.
They range from how the justice system could improve to whether we’re getting housing right, and whether a downtown mall is on the right track to what the legal issues are if communities want to banish people.
It’s not always possible to get all the answers, and issues are often more complicated than one or two simple answers. We try to set that out in our reporting and provide context.
All of the stories on this page relate to topics that are likely to generate more headlines in 2026. Hopefully, they’ll help you understand more about big issues in the NWT.
The NWT’s premier and RCMP are advocating for stricter bail laws to protect the public, while some legal experts argue that’s not the right solution.
Premiers from across Canada have called on the federal government to change the criminal code so that some people, particularly repeat and violent offenders, find it harder to secure release on bail while awaiting trial.
RJ Simpson, who is both the NWT’s premier and justice minister, told Cabin Radio he wants to see legislative amendments that reflect the uniqueness of the North and address the increasing problem of illicit drugs and organized crime in the territory.
Emily Blake reported on this in January. Mark Carney’s government has since introduced bail reform legislation.
Healthcare in the NWT has its fair share of issues, from staffing to access to primary care to medical travel. But how does it hold up when compared to the rest of the country?
Cabin Radio talked to healthcare workers across the NWT and Canada to learn whether patients are experiencing better care elsewhere – or whether aspects of the territory’s healthcare are still in decent shape compared to other parts of the country.
We looked at staffing levels, morale among workers, primary healthcare and access to care. We spoke with experts elsewhere in the country to understand how the picture looks in other place.
Caelan Beard reported on this in March.
Centre Square Mall is in the heart of downtown Yellowknife. There are two sections – an upper and lower mall, separated by a barrier that you can see through but not cross – each owned by a separate company. Both firms are headquartered elsewhere.
For decades, news reports have documented a mall in declining health. Vacant units became the dominant feature of both mall levels. Reports of violence and threats are not new.
Yet the mall is one of the last remaining places where some of the city’s most vulnerable can warm up, use a restroom and socialize during the coldest months of the year.
This year, there was a flurry of activity in the mall with new businesses opening up. Will an influx of foot traffic improve the situation inside Centre Square Mall, or will existing and underlying issues persist? Claire McFarlane reported on this in March. There is now talk of turning some of the mall into an Aurora College campus.
Rio Tinto, which owns the Diavik mine, said workers at the A21 site – where underground mining began last year – found a piece of ancient wood “while scooping kimberlite ore” on February 20.
“We have something very similar that was pulled out of the Ekati diamond mine well over 25 years ago now,” said Ryan Silke, a museum collections officer at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife
“The one we have is a metasequoia, which is basically this really ancient deciduous conifer. The contemporary example would be a redwood tree that you might find growing in more temperate parts of California.”
Why are swamp trees from tens of millions of years ago something you might find far underground in modern-day Arctic diamond mines? And why haven’t they long ago ground into dust? Ollie Williams reported on this in March.
New housing data proves what most people in the NWT already know – the territory’s housing crisis persists. The data may also offer a slight glimmer of hope.
2024 data indicates 23 percent of households in the NWT are in core need. The lowest percentages were found in Dettah (13.5 percent) and Fort Smith (16.8 percent), while the highest came in Wrigley (48.5 percent) followed by Paulatuk (48.4 percent.)
In the past decade, the number of households in core need increased in almost every region of the NWT – the Beaufort Delta, Dehcho, Sahtu, South Slave and Yellowknife area.
The potential good news? In the shorter term, the picture looks a little better. Four of the six regions reported fewer households in core need last year compared to 2019. That may indicate the beginning of a positive trend. Claire McFarlane studied the figures in April.
If you do nothing else to protect your home from a wildfire, clear a 1.5-metre space around the building by removing anything that could burn.
That’s the message from a company that goes in after major wildfires to examine how homes were destroyed – and how other properties were saved.
Greg Baxter, a senior researcher at FP Innovations, presented some of the firm’s findings to representatives of 25 NWT communities.
Baxter and colleagues carried out an examination of homes in Enterprise after the August 2023 wildfire that burned much of the South Slave hamlet. Ollie Williams reported on the findings in April.
Fire chiefs in NWT communities threatened by 2023’s wildfires say they feel much more prepared now if the worst happens again. But there’s one thing they want.
They want what Alberta has: a dedicated program for fighting wildfires at the exact point where the fire crosses from the forest into a community.
This is called the wildland-urban interface. Some people call it WUI (“woo-ee”) for short. It’s where the forest ends and houses start.
In the Northwest Territories, if the wildfire is in the forest, the NWT government’s wildland fire crews handle it. If there’s a fire in the community, the community’s fire hall and its structural firefighters are in charge. Ollie Williams reported in May on calls for that to evolve.
As communities across the NWT grapple with the devastating impacts of drugs and violent crime, Indigenous governments are considering banishment as one potential solution.
Dene leaders have identified barring people causing harm from communities – particularly people suspected of dealing illicit drugs – as one of several priorities for a newly formed task force to examine.
Under the Indian Act, First Nations may banish people from communities through band council resolutions supported by Indigenous bylaws such as a trespass law.
Emily Blake reported in June on the legal aspects of banishment and its limitations.
Mike Lee is the Yellowknife Multisport Club’s president. The club arranges outdoor events throughout the year and Lee says wildfire smoke was never a concern when he first became involved with the club, five years ago.
Now, he said, smoke interferes on a regular basis.
This year, the NWT’s chief public health officer warned wildfires were causing “very high-risk” drops in air quality for some residents. The smoke disrupted routines and raised questions about the effects on human health.
Jacksen Friske sought answers in this report from August.
After five NWT communities reported a budgetary deficit in the 2023-24 fiscal year, some leaders say they’re chronically underfunded from other levels of government.
If operating expenses exceed revenue generated over multiple years, a deficit can build up.
In Fort Simpson, the deficit accumulated over the past several years had reached $2.7 million as of December 2024, according to the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs or Maca.
Maca said the four other communities to have recently reported a deficit are Aklavik, Wrigley, Wekweètì and Fort Resolution. Claire McFarlane looked into those communities’ finances in September.
A commercial freighter that ran aground in the Northwest Passage in September was the latest in a string of Arctic shipping incidents where experts say luck prevented a worse outcome.
Dutch-owned cargo ship MV Thamesborg was transporting industrial carbon blocks from China to Quebec when it hit a shoal in the Franklin Strait, which lies between Prince of Wales Island and the Nunavut mainland.
It’s not the first time a ship has been grounded in the Canadian Arctic, nor the most dramatic case in recent history.
Chloe Williams looked at whether lessons are being learned in this September report.
As Yellowknife struggles with a lack of available land for housing, City Hall is considering possible solutions to spur development of vacant property.
While the city is rezoning underutilized land and pursuing residential intensification on land under its control, critics have pointed to vacant lots, particularly in the downtown core, as a preferred location for development.
Many of those lots are not owned by the city. Yellowknife councillor Tom McLennan proposed the idea of a vacant land tax earlier this year as one way to encourage private owners to develop unused land.
Emily Blake reported in November on some of the options in front of council.
Joe Dragon is the NWT’s man in Ottawa. He is paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to “foster strong relationships” with the federal government. How’s that going?
Dragon and NWT Premier RJ Simpson answered our questions at the end of a year in which the territory’s biggest projects were overlooked by Prime Minister Mark Carney’s new Major Projects Office.
The GNWT says Dragon’s salary as senior envoy to Ottawa is in the highest deputy ministers’ pay band, sitting at between $261,000 and $327,000 annually.
In December, Ollie Williams asked Dragon and Simpson what the NWT is getting in return for the investment.
Why did elevated lead in school water suddenly become an issue this year in the NWT? Is it only a problem in schools? And what else do you need to know?
We’ve been asking questions of the territorial government and so have regular MLAs, who held a briefing with various ministers.
The headline is: community-wide water does not have a lead problem but some older buildings do because of fixtures in their plumbing.
In December, Ollie Williams set out 10 big questions and provided the answers we have so far.
For years, the accepted wisdom was that Yellowknife – with one road south, hundreds of kilometres long – presented a tough prospect for car thieves.
But RCMP data shows more than 400 vehicles have been reported stolen in the city over the past five years. One in every 25 is never found.
If you’re looking for some form of good news, the number of reported vehicle thefts in Yellowknife this year is down on 2023 and 2024.
Ollie Williams examined the data in December.
