Yellowknife election 2026: Simon Whitehouse interview

Simon Whitehouse says his years reporting on Yellowknife’s municipal affairs have given him a strong familiarity with city government. He’s running for Yellowknife City Council in this month’s municipal election.

Whitehouse has lived in Yellowknife since 2011 and spent much of his time working for Northern News Services, where he was primarily a city reporter. He attended council and committee meetings throughout the 2010s, covering issues and decisions affecting the city.

He is running on a platform to clean up Yellowknife by increasing the number of community clean-ups, and starting a time bank which would advertise volunteer opportunities for garbage pickup and snow clearing needed by the city in exchange for access to municipal facilities.

He says his experience as a reporter, connections in the community and interest in Yellowknife’s history and heritage would help him as a councillor.

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 hosted a mayoral candidates’ debate on October 5 from 7-8:30pm at City Hall, which was broadcasted 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 1, 2026. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

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

Simon Whitehouse: I live in the downtown vicinity, central core, and what prompted me to run was just the amount of garbage and litter that I’ve seen in the streets. I have a dog we walk between Tin Can Hill and Frame Lake and along the trail, along Old Airport Road in that area, I just see a lot of garbage and litter and I just think that’s the issue that prompted me that I think there needs to be more of a coordinated approach to plan for garbage pickup and just make the city more presentable and clean.

Affordability is a broad issue for Yellowknife residents. In your view, what is driving the cost of living most and what can city council realistically do to make Yellowknife more affordable?

So I’ve given that quite a bit of thought, like on affordability. Much of it I think is structural. The City of Yellowknife is located in a geographic location that’s very far from major trans trade corridors like southern Canada. So it’s very structural, I would say. Transportation costs, you know, buying items, all that depends on the global economy, whatever oil prices are at the time. Fuel costs create a lot of economic pressure and I’m particularly concerned about diesel at the moment.

So how can council or the city address affordability? Well, I think it’s tough because again, we’re sort of on the bottom totem of the higher orders of government, if I can put it that way, where we obviously don’t have a lot of influence on international prices and that sort of thing. However as a council, I think we really have to concentrate on balance, being able to ensure that the services are kept up to what residents expect for a municipality, while also keeping in mind that there are financial stresses that people are facing.

You’ve proposed a time bank and a review of the city’s economic development approach. How would you measure whether those initiatives are actually helping residents?

One big thing I am proposing is introducing a municipal time bank pilot project. Time banking is essentially trying to have the city cooperate with non-government organizations to develop volunteer items. For example, if there are volunteer items that it needs, like garbage pickup, snow clearing and maybe clipping bushes or something like that, they would put that in the time bank, but also say this is what we could provide in return. Perhaps it’s like an hour at the aquatic centre or maybe some leniency at the salvaging centre, or something along those lines. So that what’s happening is you’re creating an almost parallel system where you’re actually using time as currency as opposed to dollars as currency.

Now the other thing is, I could also save up time dollars and I could also give them to other people. I could donate them or save them to organizations. So essentially, it would basically be the same thing as using money, except you’re using time. And my big proposal is to try to apply that to user fees for families where if you have three children, it’s very expensive to access some of the services. You could possibly enter this into the time bank, and applied time dollars to user fees type thing.

I think the other thing on affordability is also just trying to continue to access territorial and federal funds as much as we can just to reduce the burden on municipal taxpayers.

What do you think is the biggest thing missing from Yellowknife’s downtown right now, and what would you want to see council do to make it a place where people want to live, work and spend time?

I think the immediate issue right now is that there’s a lot of change happening in downtown. We have a new wellness centre opening up and I think that is something that the city needs to monitor in terms of how it’s used and how it fits into the neighbourhood. We also have a low-income housing structure moving in around the same time, and then we have the Nest development there too. So all these projects are coming together at the same time.

I think the city needs to set a tone for the overall neighbourhood feeling. I guess one of the proposals that I and my partner have come up with is in behind the Gold Range there’s a little bit of an alley there. I think there’s interest in developing that as sort of a child-friendly area that we’d like to pave and just have it friendly for families so that we can actually make use of pieces of the downtown to make it more attractive for families.

Within an entire council, how would you advocate for these things?

I’d advocate vocally and try to persuade my fellow councillors that a lot of these changes, these tone changes, really don’t need to cost a lot of money. I think that’s really the big thing. Some of it is just reorganization and just attention to certain matters.

There’s people in town willing to make these changes, it’s just a matter of engaging with these folks and making it happen. I think residents want to see tangible things that we can point to as well. I mean, I think that’s the other point, right? People want to know that or see that where they’re paying their high taxes, they’re actually getting something visual and tangible that’s making a difference overall.

So you’ve talked about everything from cleanliness and parking to housing and public spaces. Where would you start, and why?

If elected, I’d be coming in in November, so I’d have to be thinking somewhat seasonally because the budget is coming along right away. Again, the big reason that I was running was cleanliness. So, at some point, I would like to be able to sit down with council and administration and just look at what collectively as a community are we doing to pick up litter and garbage in the downtown vicinity, how well it is working. What are other organizations doing, like Ecology North. And are there other opportunities to do like a community cleanup.

My big idea was, on top of the big May community cleanup, is typically Indigenous Peoples Day falls on a long weekend. Could we work with the North Slave Métis Alliance on having a community cleanup as part of the weekend? Could we actually use part of that weekend to have an event that’s a community cleanup? Maybe it’s fun where we’re picking teams, having a bit of a competition and an awards ceremony afterwards, and just going out and picking up garbage in a sort of organized way. And again, it would be a good way to having a working partnership between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, and I think it would be a good way to also kind of start off the summer season, so that when tourists come in, they see a clean neighbourhood and clean environment.

Crime and public safety are major concerns for many Yellowknife residents. What do you see as the city’s role in addressing crime, given that policing and many of the underlying social issues involve other governments and organizations?

I’ve been a pretty big advocate of having RCMP presentations at council, which when I was reporting we used to have. Now I get why there’s some reluctance on that because there’s just so much to do and the city doesn’t really have a lot of impact on the RCMP. But I think having the RCMP give a presentation that’s not a statistics dump like saying, we’ve had this many incidents per month type thing it just doesn’t really mean anything. I’d like to get our RCMP presentations to council that would help actually shape the city’s crime prevention efforts. To me, that would make a lot of sense. It would just allow another information flow to residents about what’s actually going on.

On your platform you’ve said that Yellowknife has a strong community spirit, but that residents and organizations can’t tackle challenges in isolation. What do you think the city could do differently to get more residents involved in their community?

I don’t like to be the high school spirit-squad type of guy, but I do think there are small things that we could do just to build what I would call social capital. One of the things that I mentioned, like the meetings, I think those are great. Just having open dialogue with people. One of the big things that would be great for this community is just having community dinners, which we don’t seem to have. I think something like that would really bring people out to build that community spirit and bring more people engaged.

You’ve emphasized action, results and measurable deliverables in your platform. If you were elected, what would you want residents to be able to point to at the end of your term and say “that’s what council accomplished“?

Sometimes it’s hard to get citizens to recognize stuff, but I think it’d be good to point to cleanliness. We actually have a system in place that does work. We’re putting in a lot of volunteer hours that I think could be measurable and presented as something awesome for the community. Like we have this many citizens putting in these many volunteer hours to make a difference in the community. I think improved trail signage would be a great way to point to it.

What is your familiarity with council? Have you watched a council meeting before?

I would say my familiarity is quite strong. I came up here in 2011 when I was going to meetings regularly. Gordon Van Tighem was the mayor and Robert Long was the SAO. I attended a lot of meetings when they were discussing issues like community energy and Con Mine geothermal, and I went to a lot of municipal service committee meetings, regular council meetings, a lot of special council meetings. So I’m quite familiar with the process and sort of the language and just how council works with administration to sort of accomplish the city’s objectives.

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

I don’t know if I’ve said this explicitly, but I think just because of my familiarity, because I have sat in a lot of meetings, I know the recurring issues that come back and that council has to update all the time. So whether it’s cost of living, property taxes, services that people expect, garbage pickup, that sort of thing, I know these issues fairly well, it’s just a matter of the current content that I have to catch up with.

I’m well connected, largely through my reporting job, but also just through volunteers. I know a lot of past councillors, I know a lot of community members. I’m really passionate about the city’s history and just heritage and just a lot of the stories it has to tell.