Yellowknife election 2026: Vibhesh Tripathi interview

Vibhesh Tripathi has lived in Yellowknife for the past 15 years and decided to run for council because he believes if you want change to happen, you have to step up.

His campaign platform centres around improving transit and other city services, retaining talent in the North, and not increasing property taxes.

“I have no experience in politics at all, so I’m coming in with a fresh start,” he said.

Tripathi manages operations in the three territories for Brinks Canada, which moves cash and high-value commodities around for clients like banks.

He is also a firearm safety course instructor, a liquor inspector for the territorial government, and does some work with Yellowknife Search and Rescue.

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.

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This interview was recorded on October 2, 2026. The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Sarah Pruys: Why do you want to be a councillor?

Vibhesh Tripathi: I want to be a councillor because my mother, who is no longer with us, told me that if you want to see a change, you must be the change. So you have to take actions to do the change that you want.

Over the years, I’ve seen a city make a lot of decisions and things of that nature which did not sit well with people. I’m here to basically be a part of the change so, when the next change has to come around, at least I have my voice heard. At least people around me who have things to say – my constituents, people who will vote, people who are part of the city – can have their voices be heard.

You’ve mentioned a few times that some of the changes over the last decade or so haven’t been great. Can you give some examples of things that you would want to see reversed?

Not reversed, more like done a little differently. For example, when I came to town several years ago, it was cleaner. Certain trails used to be much more accessible, much cleaner, and I would like to see that come back. Of course, the city does have programs to clean them up, but there’s still way more dumping happening compared to the cleanup happening.

We need to find a nice balance where we can say, all right, if you are new to the community – new to Yellowknife or just visiting Yellowknife – when you go out, you want to see something that resembles the image of the city, not the worst of us. We have access to a great pool, but at the same time, we don’t have enough marketing, so a lot of people cannot come in and access it readily.

Small changes of that nature need to happen.

Let’s get into some of the main election issues for you. You said housing was the first one. That’s a pretty broad topic and something that’s really not just a municipal issue, but something the municipal government needs to work on with both the territorial and federal governments. Explain your position on housing and what you want to see.

Housing has definitely been Yellowknife’s sore topic for the longest time, ever since I showed up. But housing itself is not the problem, access to housing is. We are looking at developing new housing in town right now, which is working pretty great. But if you build a house, you also have to provide access to transit, which I think nobody’s talking about. You also have to provide access to parking. You also have to provide a reasonable location where people can commute to work. I think that’s a topic we’re not talking enough about.

There are a lot of people in town who work at 8am, but our transit system does not start that early to provide the routes to move the people into their work first thing in the morning, so you are hindered by transport because of it.

Now we are developing a lot of downtown, but we are not on the outskirts, right? So we have to start thinking about long-term strategy. We also have to start thinking about transit. We also have to start thinking about school buses.

Note: Yellowknife bus routes start between 6:55am and 7:35am and offer 30-minute service during peak times. There are no buses on Sundays or statutory holidays.

Your next issue is property taxes. Tell me where you stand on property taxes and what you want to see there.

I am proposing a freeze in the property tax rate increase. I want to emphasize: we’re not cutting off property taxes, we are just putting a pause on the property tax rate increase.

Given the heating cost is going up dramatically for a lot of consumers this winter, there’s going to be a lot of people who are currently on oil systems and they are going to feel the pain. The last thing I want to see is people getting discouraged or people considering leaving town because they are like, “heating cost is up, transport cost is up.”

There are a lot of policies around property taxes which people don’t agree with, but all we have to do is incentivize that when you’re paying your property taxes, it’s not just going to the administrative part of the city, it’s also going towards the groundwork.

Previous councils have looked at a zero-percent increase but at some point you need to catch up on that, you do need to still pay for all this infrastructure. You said you want more transit, you want more housing on the outskirts. Property taxes are one of the key ways we fund these things. If we’re not increasing property taxes, how are you proposing we pay for these other improvements you want to see?

Well, that is going to come down to the nitty gritty of the details.

What I’m proposing is, instead of thinking of the city’s property taxes as an unlimited resource, we think about it as a limited resource for a little bit and we consider: what are the core requirements of the city in order to make things happen? If you’re looking at core requirements, I think we have quite a few core requirements that could be met a little better.

Then we have all the extracurricular activities that take place, where the city is spending money on things that let’s say a lot of people may not agree with, so we figure out: what are the things that are extra? You trim off the extra a little bit and see if we can improve the core functionality.

I’m not proposing that we start cutting things off, instead we start looking at avenues where we can save some funding. The money that is going out should be used a little better.

For council every year, this is one of their big exercises: to go through the budget, line by line, and figure out what to keep and what to cut. What would you be looking at getting rid of then?

I’m not going to comment on any of that particular thing. What I’m going to essentially try to do is let the city decide, right?

But as a councillor, you’d be making this decision, and you’re saying there are things you don’t think are needed. So what would be those things?

Well, we’re not looking at increasing the funding. We’re just taking a pause for the funding. So some of the things we can possibly cut is, let’s say, lunch meals for when the meetings happen, right? We’re spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on meals and things of that nature. We can possibly look at cutting those down.

What I’m saying is there are extra costs that go out all the time. We can trim down the extra fat out of the spending portion of it. And again, I’m not looking at the budget in detail because that’s private information but, once I’m on council, I probably will have access to it or at least have more insight towards it. So once I have access to more of it, I can be like, “why are we doing things a certain way?”

Also, thinking about the long term. For example, there’s a chatter about running water over Tin Can Hill, right? Once that development starts, are we today starting that development at the lowest grade possible, or are we trying to do it at the highest grade possible? Whereas in 20 years, we’re going to be looking at the same development and we’re going to say, well, we should have put bigger pipes for sewer and water. So if the city is going to spend the money, I want the city to think about in 20 years, what’s the requirement?

Note: The City of Yellowknife publishes a detailed budget for the municipality each year and the deliberations that decide the budget are public. What the city spends on meals for councillors isn’t clear. We asked the city, which replied: “Meals are not routinely provided at regular Council or Governance & Priorities Committee (GPC) meetings, except on certain occasions. For example, refreshments may be provided during Committee meetings or Budget Deliberations when the extended duration of the meeting warrants it. The provision of refreshments is therefore dependent on the length and nature of the meeting rather than being a standard practice for all meetings.” Meals were included with other expenses in a “materials” line item for 2026 worth $107,000. How much of that sum was taken up by food and drinks is not specified.

You mentioned growth in town. This ties in to how we are going to develop and grow. What does this look like, particularly if we aren’t increasing property taxes?

Well, growth is tied in to the town, as in retention of people. It’s not like physical growth; it’s the retention of talent that we need to see grow.

We have lots of funding coming down the pipeline – from the city, from the federal government, from the territorial government – and it almost feels like every time you look around town, you’re looking at companies from down south coming up and doing the job for us. We should have local talent around and provide them enough work and provide them enough access to resources so they do not feel like down south, things are a whole lot better.

So growth in town would be talent-based retention, ideally, I would say.

And what should the city council do to foster that?

Over the last few days, when I have gone doorknocking, I’ve talked to a few people who are new to town and one of the biggest complaints is there’s not a whole lot to do in the city.

Now, I also looked at city programs. The city has a lot to offer for an average person and a family. The city can keep them busy on a weekend basis. But what it almost feels like is nobody has access to that knowledge or they do not have access to that information right away.

The city posts on their website, but I think we need to do a little bit of a better job with marketing. Probably see: what do newcomers want when they show up to town?

Just going back to the growth and development of talent. What can the city council do to develop talent and ensure that people have those jobs here?

That would be decided by the growth options available. So right now, all the properties that are going up, the buildings and such, we can retain construction, all the blue collar jobs. We should have all that available in town. 

We need to do work at the city level to make sure that first of all we have enough contracts out to have the growth. And any growth that’s coming down the pipeline, we should talk to our local developers and be like, “we need to start looking at hiring more of the local individuals rather than just calling people from down south.”

Now I know the city doesn’t have a lot of say into that because they provide the development permit, but I think there has to be a certain degree of influence in it, and that is a relationship the city has to create with all the other levels of government.

How many council meetings have you watched or attended?

I have only watched one. 

And then your elevator pitch. Why should people vote for you?

Vote for me because I am planning to listen to what people have to say. I do not have any high ideology or high, high goals in life, except for the fact that I want to make sure that when people have a problem, people are heard.

We’re going to move on, do the next thing and my target audience is pretty much the people that actually reach out to me and they have something to say.

Problems have solutions, attitudes don’t. So, if you just come with a complaint, well, there’s nothing we can do about it. But if you also have a solution, we can possibly implement it. So I’m asking anybody who is willing to vote for me to have a solution to the problem they’re going to present. Because we can work on that.