An online registry designed to let NWT residents see health inspections of restaurants and cafés has gone by the wayside.
Environmental health officers carry out routine inspections of all establishments in the territory that handle food.
In theory, an online database allows people to see the results of those inspections and understand more about food safety at the places where they like to eat.
But in practice, the last update to the database was an inspection of Yellowknife’s Domino’s Pizza on May 9, 2024, meaning two years have now elapsed with no update.
In November last year, the NWT’s Department of Health and Social Services said it was “developing a new, public-facing website to share inspection reports.”
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“It was originally scheduled to be launched in the summer of 2025, but development is taking longer than expected. We are working to get the site up as soon as possible but cannot provide a timeline at the moment,” the department said at the time.
Half a year later, the status of that new website is not clear. Approached for comment on Wednesday, the department had not responded by early Sunday morning.
The GNWT had struggled to keep its food inspections portal updated even before the latest two-year gap.
At least a year went by between 2022 and 2023 without anything new being posted – though the territory insisted inspections were continuing – and the portal went untouched for more than half a year after the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, though again the GNWT said its inspections were not interrupted.
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In the past, the results of inspection reports have helped to illuminate significant issues facing downtown Yellowknife restaurants.
For example, in 2018, reports made public on the HSS website were the only means by which the public was made aware of a cockroach problem inside Centre Square Mall cafés.
That allowed journalists to look into the issue and follow up with the mall owners.
Cockroaches were no longer identified as an issue within the same cafés in publicly available inspections from 2023 and 2024.
