Yellowknife election 2026: Rylund Johnson interview

Rylund Johnson is running for Yellowknife City Council in the fall 2026 municipal election, having previously served as Yellowknife North’s MLA.

Johnson says he moved to Yellowknife in 2015, where he began his legal career and became involved in the community.

He went on to work as a lawyer for the City of Yellowknife and spent one term as an MLA after being elected to the Legislative Assembly in 2019.

Johnson says his Keep Yellowknife Weird slogan has a real message behind it: preserving the city’s feel and everything that makes it good, while embracing the growth that we’re told is coming.

He wants to pursue new approaches to affordable housing, believes a change in the culture at City Hall is possible, and says he’s the kind of candidate who will make sure “the little things” raised by constituents get done while he’s on council. He also thinks his time as an MLA gave him a better understanding of what can be realistically achieved.

Cabin Radio is aiming to interview all 21 candidates running for eight council seats. We have asked every candidate to list their four top priorities to guide those interviews.

Melissa Syer and Garett Cochrane are running for mayor. Cabin Radio is hosting a mayoral candidates’ debate on October 5 from 7-8:30pm at City Hall, which will be broadcast live on our Facebook page, website and app.

Election day is October 19. Early voting begins on October 5 and runs until October 16.

Eshana Gohil: Why do you want to serve on Yellowknife City Council?

Rylund Johnson: I’m running under a platform that I call Keep Yellowknife Weird, which I hope people read as a fun and engaging way to make sure that as we grow and develop, and a lot of new federal money shows up, we preserve the things we love about Yellowknife. 

In your view, what is the biggest gap in housing in Yellowknife right now, and what can city council realistically do to address it?

I think the biggest gap is most certainly affordable housing. I’m a supporter of all the identified infill lots. That’s Con Road and Burwash, that’s Taylor Road, that’s Niven phase eight. But I think the city’s kind-of abdicated its responsibility to care about what gets built and to care whether affordable housing gets built.

We saw with School Draw that they proposed that, and then the Délı̨nę First Nation came forward and said, ‘you know, we’re interested in developing this.’ There’s kind-of an unprecedented amount of federal housing money right now, and I think the city has to step into that role of being a bit of a deal maker and seeing who’s interested, and ideally build some affordable housing. 

On your platform, you describe one-dollar land for NGOs to build housing. Can you explain that in more detail?

Obviously the City of Yellowknife doesn’t have the money to operate public housing or step into what the GNWT is doing. We just don’t have that tax base. But what we do have is land, and we’ve identified a lot of parcels of land that people cherish and love.

I think the compromise there is that we ask for proposals for nonprofits, Indigenous groups, those willing to build affordable housing, and we make it available to them for $1. That can be the city’s contribution.

We’ve seen this, with YWCA, the women’s society. These different organizations have gone out and purchased land or purchased units on the market, and I think the city can really be working with them to give them the land for free, maybe waive some development charges, and give them a bit of tax abatement if they’re willing to build affordable housing. 

What are specific ways council can offer that?

The city right now, in their land administration bylaw, has the ability to give land away for $1. They give it to Habitat for Humanity. Every Habitat for Humanity project, they donate the land, and they’ve been doing that for years. It’s great. I love Habitat for Humanity.

I would just like them to do it for more groups than Habitat for Humanity. Anyone who’s willing to build affordable housing.

You said you want City Hall to “get out of the way.” What do you think the city is doing right now that is slowing development or making it harder to get things built?

If there’s a few thousand municipalities in Canada, the vast majority are doing permitting better than us. Many have adopted 24-hour permitting timelines. Many have really adopted quick service standards and turned around development permits quicker.

Right now, I think there’s four vacancies in the city’s planning department, so they simply don’t have the staff to do the work. But also, I think a complete rethink of that permitting process needs to be done.

And even more, it’s a change in culture. It’s hard to change the cultures in bureaucratic organizations. But when someone comes to the City of Yellowknife, whether it’s a housing project or a community initiative, or to set up a festival or to use public land for a short period of time, I want the city to say ‘yes, of course, here’s how you do it,’ as opposed to ‘no, here’s the 100 reasons that’s not going to work for you.’

You’ve talked about mixed use zoning and fewer studies. How would you balance moving projects forward more quickly with making sure residents have a meaningful say in how the city is developed?

To be honest, I think there’s a lot of work to be done on our public engagement. This council, the last public hearing was at 4:30pm or something. I think the council and administration have to accept they need to be in the evenings when people aren’t working.

I want to hear from residents. I want to make sure that we have that fulsome debate, but what I don’t want is – before we have that fulsome debate – that we’ve spent $400,000 to pay some consultant to produce a study.

I really think we can just listen to our residents, and then council can take the information before them and make a decision with that.

You’ve identified things like trails, signs, benches, dog parks, and community events as priorities. What do you think is missing from Yellowknife’s day-to-today public spaces right now?

That is really tied to making downtown investment a priority. We have a $600,000 downtown development fund right now. I want to open that up to community groups. I want to open that up to the businesses downtown. I want to hear from the public what they want. Do they want benches? Do they want community activation of spaces?

That priority to me is really about finding those little things that makes our downtown more enjoyable. I think it seems like we’ve stopped trying downtown, and I think there’s a lot council can do, starting with very little things. 

You’ve proposed investing in downtown, moving the library to a ground floor location, developing the 50/50 lot. What do you think Yellowknife needs most from its major city projects, and how would council decide what should come first?

Moving the library is a nice-to-have, but there’s a lot of must-haves. Regardless of any growth at all, we’re probably going to need a new lift transfer station, two new pumphouses. There’s the underground water submarine line, which I mean, unless federal money shows up, I don’t know how on earth we’re going to afford that. They just cancelled a fire hall renovation because the fire hall came out too expensive, and so this next council is faced with deciding whether to renovate that fire hall or build a new one.

All of those things — the water and the sewer and the public safety — those are must-haves, and council’s going to have to deal with that anyway. Ideally, we need a lot of federal investment to show up in order to not completely suffocate our tax base. And then there’s a huge list of nice-to-haves.

Top of that list for the nice-to-haves to me is moving the library to a ground floor location. I just feel it’s isolated. I think there is federal investment to build a more cultural space. I think there’s some potential partnerships. I think if a council puts their mind to it, they can find a way to really revive our library. 

Can you tell me a little bit more about Keep Yellowknife Weird?

Keep Yellowknife Weird is that Yellowknife is a very special and unique place. We don’t all move to the end of the road north of 60 to survive long dark winters because, you know, it doesn’t feel like a Calgary suburb. It’s Yellowknife, and I think right now with the military investment showing up and potentially two highways to the Arctic Ocean and a potential hydro expansion, we’re at risk of large work camps of 500 workers showing up, the federal government showing up, and Yellowknife to start feeling a lot more like Fort McMurray than it does Yellowknife.

So, to me, that’s really about making sure that we accept this growth is coming, but we make sure to capture it. We make sure that people want to live here, they want to stay here. We constantly get that feedback loop from our residents, ‘what makes this special to you,’ and we find ways to do that, and I think a lot of that is building community events. It’s empowering our community.

There’s a lot of people here with great ideas, and City Hall has blocked them over the years, and I’d like those people to try again to say, ‘OK, yeah, I’m willing to give this idea another shot.’

As a former MLA and city lawyer, you’ve had experience with both territorial politics and the city’s legal and municipal systems. How has that experience shaped your understanding of the role of city council and what it can realistically accomplish?

When I ran for MLA, I was much more idealistic, and I had very grand visions. And now my politics are extremely practical. Before anyone raises anything, I think about ‘OK, how can we practically do that?’ And it has informed my philosophy to start small, you know, just little steps. ‘What’s the next easiest thing we can do?’ OK, let’s do it. Let’s not study it. Let’s not overthink it. Let’s just go run out.

I love pilot projects. I love letting people do things for a short period of time and then getting the feedback. I think that experience has really allowed me to understand the system’s limitations, and to be able to push back on administration and say no, I know how that works. I know the bylaw, and we can change it. And so I do think it puts me in a unique position to both work with GNWT partners and with administration to make sure that we can keep Yellowknife weird.  

Other than what you’ve talked about, what are other reasons that people should vote for you?

I think the main role of a city councillor is constituent issues. If I did nothing else but the little things – you know, figuring out how traffic flows on your street, figuring out that the garbages get emptied, having your concerns about snow clearing addressed – I would be happy. That’s the work of a city councillor, is to just make sure those day-to-day operations are funded, that there’s reporting, that we’re actually listening to people about those little things.

I think I have that ability to make sure, poke administration to get the little things done, and that’ll be a priority of mine, in addition to the big things.