NWT’s 2026-27 budget passes with additional $40M in spending

Northwest Territories MLAs have voted 15-3 to pass a 2026-27 operating budget after weeks of debate resulted in extra spending worth about $40 million.

Three-quarters of that comes in a $30-million package to speed up the implementation of recommendations from an inclusive schooling review.

That money should fast-track the expansion of specialist services like speech-language pathology and early literacy screening. It will “ensure that schools can begin these enhancements immediately,” finance minister Caroline Wawzonek said this week.

Other agreed add-ons include commitments to:

• prioritize filling a range of vacancies in primary care teams, plus create more nurse practitioner and community health nurse positions in regions short on doctors;
• buy more equipment and digital tools that improve access to healthcare in small communities;
• give Aurora College financial support targeted at making sure education and social work programs launch in 2027;
• subsidize the transfer of now-disused community learning centres to Indigenous or community governments; and
• work with the Tłı̨chǫ Government to establish a standalone sixth administrative region of the NWT covering the Tłı̨chǫ communities.

All cabinet members and regular MLAs supported the bill with the exception of the self-styled independent members’ caucus of Richard Edjericon, Robert Hawkins and Kieron Testart.

More: See the detail of the original budget tabled in February

Denny Rodgers, the Inuvik Boot Lake MLA, delivered a detailed response that summed up most regular MLAs’ approval.

He said the extra $40 million showed cabinet “directly responding” to issues like primary care reform and medical travel that were raised in the legislature. (One of the commitments made this week solidifies the presence of a medical travel case management program. It is designed to improve scheduling and reduce repeat trips.)

New spending on healthcare will involve “practical steps that northerners will feel directly,” Rodgers said.

Wawzonek also pledged the GNWT will work with the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation to advance the Mackenzie Delta LNG project. “LNG is not a side conversation. It is central to economic growth, energy security and the North’s role in a changing world,” said Rodgers.

“This budget is just a first step,” he concluded. “Now the government must show whether it can meet the moment. The pressures facing northerners are real, and this budget has to translate into results that people can see and feel.”

Budget’s critics unimpressed

The budget’s three opponents said it did not go far enough.

“The government got away very cheap this time around,” said Yellowknife Centre MLA Robert Hawkins, complaining that fewer than a quarter of regular MLAs’ asks were met.

Range Lake MLA Kieron Testart said the commitment to help move community learning centres to local governments did not come with any funding for programming, meaning they are “not coming back to life any time soon without additional investment and support.”

He also criticized what he said was a lack of meaningful progress in the transfer of land from the GNWT to the City of Yellowknife, a longstanding issue.

Tu Nedhé-Wiilideh MLA Richard Edjericon said the budget brought no real investment for his district.

“I’ve been keeping detailed lists of my community needs. I compile these lists – with community leaders, stakeholders, my constituency – and send them to the minister every year, only to have them denied,” he said.

“Then here at budget time I stand and go through that list, voicing my disappointment, while the minister and her colleagues sit across the chamber busy typing away on their laptops.”

Finance minister responds

Wawzonek pushed back at some of those concerns, saying the GNWT did not have “endless money” or “endless public service” to deliver on every issue.

The minister said revising line items in the budget amounts to more than simply adding cash.

With every alteration, she said, “you’re fundamentally going to change the things that we deliver upon as a government.”

The budget that ultimately passed slightly amends a February draft that proposed operational spending of $2.39 billion. That draft did not differ drastically from the previous year.

Yellowknife North MLA Shauna Morgan, supporting the amended budget, acknowledged that any politician “could stand up at any time and list a hundred things that we don’t have in the territory.” She suggested asking for all of them to be fixed was not realistic.

More: Read MLAs’ views in full on OpenNWT

One new item in the budget this week is provision of overnight RCMP accommodation in both Gamètì and Tsiigehtchic, which do not have detachments. Mackenzie Delta MLA George Nerysoo welcomed that move.

“Maybe in the next budget we’ll have a police officer in Tsiigehtchic,” he said, “but that fight’s been going on for over 40 years.”

Summarizing her analysis of the budget, Monfwi MLA Jane Weyallon Armstrong said: “I would like to get more, but I am OK with what we have right now.”

In what amounted to a rallying cry late into Thursday evening as the vote was called, Wawzonek told the House: “This territory is at a very challenging crossroads right now. It’s been a very difficult several years of successive emergencies, successive crises, and now, really, we’re sitting in the middle of a geopolitical crisis with eyes on the Arctic and not always positive or welcoming ones.

“But the eyes of our nation are on the Arctic and it’s our opportunity to stand as elected leaders, to stand and say that we can work together, identify priorities, identify creative solutions, work towards them collaboratively, and that we are ready to do that to deliver upon projects that will build this country – because a strong North will be a strong Canada.”