Five years of NWT emergencies cost more than $350M. What’s changing?

The NWT has spent more than $350 million addressing floods and wildfires over the past five years, with recovery from some events still years from completion.

The territory’s first emergency management annual report, published this week by the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs, or Maca, put the cost of disasters from 2021 to 2025 at $354 million.

Communities minister Vince McKay had promised last November to produce annual reports on the emergency management system after rejecting calls from regular MLAs to establish a standalone emergency management agency.

The report’s $354-million figure combines estimated spending on flooding in 2021 ($34.5 million) and 2022 ($107.8 million), alongside the cost of wildfires in 2023 ($204.6 million), 2024 ($7.4 million) and 2025 ($9.5 million). The sum of those figures slightly exceeds the report’s quoted total.

A “significant amount of work” remains to complete recovery from those events, the report states, including unfinished claims for residents and small businesses, environmental contamination remediation, and federal disaster assistance audits still in progress for every year since 2021.

The 2023 wildfires – the NWT’s worst on record – account for more than half the total cost.

An independent review of the territorial government’s handling of that crisis called for a new, year-round emergency management agency. The territory has rejected the recommendation twice, despite regular MLAs passing a motion requesting that such an agency be established.

Here are five takeaways from this week’s report, most of which covers the period from April 2024 to December 2025. 

1. Some communities lack current emergency plans

The report includes tables showing the status of community emergency plans across all 33 NWT communities. The data shows uneven preparedness across the territory.

Multiple communities are working from draft plans provided by Maca rather than finalized, community-owned emergency plans. 

The GNWT holds workshops with community governments to help their plans come together, but some of the most recent workshops listed for smaller communities date back years. 

For example, the report states Fort McPherson’s last emergency planning workshop was in February 2018, Kakisa’s was in February 2015, and Sachs Harbour’s was in October 2014. 

According to the report, Maca received a community emergency plan from Yellowknife in 2025 but the GNWT doesn’t have copies of appendices referenced in that plan.

Between April 2024 and December 2025, eight planning or exercise activities were conducted involving 12 communities. 

Jean Marie River, which spent months cycling between evacuation alerts and notices during the 2025 wildfire season, is not listed as having received a workshop or exercise during the reporting period.

Fort Providence, by contrast, held a workshop in February 2024 and a tabletop exercise in April 2025, just before the community went through a summer 2025 wildfire-related evacuation.

2. Emergency Management Act update timeline set out

The report reveals a new timeline for updating the Emergency Management Act. A review of the act was a key recommendation of the 2023 wildfire after-action review and the territory committed to pursuing it.

The annual report now says amendments to the act are “anticipated in the 21st Legislative Assembly,” which would not begin until after the next territorial election in late 2027. The report gives the process a three to five-year timeline, with Maca requesting “additional resources to complete this work.”

In the meantime, working groups involving Indigenous and community governments have been established to consider potential amendments.

3. Indigenous governments’ role still under development

The independent review of the 2023 wildfires emphasized the need for Indigenous governments to be recognized as partners in emergency planning and response. 

Some steps in that direction have taken place. For example, a protocol for communicating with Indigenous governments during emergencies was developed in 2024 and has become part of standard operating procedures. 

However, the broader question of formal integration into the emergency management structure remains at the working-group stage.

The GNWT says it plans to “work with Indigenous governments to develop a model to formally incorporate them into NWT emergency planning, preparedness and response.” 

A concrete framework or timeline for that was not included in the report.

4. GNWT says some progress is being made

The report outlines several improvements made during the reporting period. Regional emergency management coordinator positions, created in 2023, were fully staffed across all five NWT regions in 2024 for the first time.

As of December 2025, 137 GNWT employees were on a surge capacity list, meaning they can be called to fill emergency management roles when needed. 

The report states approximately 7.8 percent of all GNWT staff have completed some level of incident command training, against a target of 10 percent.

The NWT Emergency Plan was updated in April 2024 to clarify roles and responsibilities. A training coordinator position was added to the emergency management organization in 2025 to implement a four-year Incident Command System training plan.

5. Emergency social supports still to come

The report says the territorial government is committed to developing an emergency social supports framework to ensure people are supported in a coordinated way during emergencies and evacuations. 

That’s in part a response to the 2023 evacuations, which highlighted gaps in how non-profit organizations and government agencies work together to support vulnerable residents.

The framework will describe roles and responsibilities for all partners including the GNWT, non-profits, Indigenous governments and community governments, and is “expected to be completed within a year,” according to the report.

What actually happened in 2024 and 2025?

The wildfires of 2023 are often the first thing people outside the NWT think of when discussing territorial emergencies, but 2024 and 2025 were each busy years too.

More: Read the report in full

During this reporting period, the report states the territory’s emergency management organization was activated for 111 days in response to seven events. Regional organizations were activated for a combined 135 days. Three communities – Fort Good Hope, Whatì and Fort Providence – declared states of local emergency and approximately 1,475 people were evacuated.

In 2024, wildfires near Fort Liard in May damaged fibre optic lines and caused communications outages across the southern NWT.

Fort Good Hope was evacuated in June 2024, with roughly 380 people hosted in Norman Wells and Délı̨nę. Others stayed at a fish camp outside Fort Good Hope.

In 2025, wildfires forced the evacuation of all 613 residents of Whatì at the end of August with people hosted in Behchokǫ̀ and Yellowknife. Fort Providence’s 459 residents were evacuated to Hay River around the same time. Jean Marie River remained at high risk from July to mid-September but an evacuation was ultimately not triggered.

NWT EMO’s budget and size

The report discloses the NWT’s emergency management organization currently operates on a budget of $1.03 million with 11 staff: one director, two managers, three specialists, and five regional emergency management coordinators. (The coordinator positions fall under separate regional budgets.)

McKay was quoted as saying in the report that the NWT “faces a wide range of hazards and risks,” with floods and wildfires “predicted to become more frequent and severe in the coming years due to climate change.”