Yellowknife election 2026: Rob Foote interview

Incumbent Rob Foote is running for a second term to help ensure there is transparent leadership, and to continue to advance work on housing, community safety and responsible growth.

After former mayor Rebecca Alty was elected to Parliament and councillor Ben Hendriksen took her place as mayor, Foote was appointed to fill the vacancy. He had originally come ninth in the 2022 election.

Foote was born and raised in Yellowknife and currently works for the NWT Health and Social Services Authority in supply chain management. In his spare time, he volunteers with youth sports.

He also served on the Community Advisory Board for Homelessness, which he joined after the 2022 election to gain more experience and exposure. As someone who was homeless at one point, Foote said he felt it was “a good opportunity to give back and advise the community on personal experiences.”

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 8, 2026. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

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

Rob Foote: Just to give back to the community. This community has given me so much. My family came here in 1979. It’s grown. It’s provided me with everything. My young family is here. It’s just an opportunity to give back and provide some growth and maybe some subject matter expertise to the city. I just really enjoy the work, and I think it’s an exciting time and there’s lots of stuff happening.

Can you elaborate a little bit more on what giving back means through a role as a councillor?

It’s tough to really qualify, but I find that we spend the early parts of our lives trying to establish ourselves, and we spend a lot of time doing that. Then it’s community service, civic service, just being able to contribute, whether it’s your time or your expertise or your knowledge, I find it’s very important to give back.

Okay, so you sent along a few topics that you wanted to talk about. The first was housing and affordability. So I’ll get you to start by talking about your position in relation to those.

I think this is pretty well a consensus opinion from everybody running for council right now is that Yellowknife just has a severe lack of housing. We could sit there and argue about housing types and density and things all day, but our main roadblock right now is that we just have no land, a very low vacancy rate. It’s super important that we get more builds on the go now so we can alleviate some of the burden, broaden the tax base and ensure that people who are struggling have a place to go.

Obviously, the biggest barrier has been land availability, and there’s been some growth in that. I would like to really make sure that we’re putting pressure on other levels of government to make land available, make zoning and building easier, so that we’re able to provide more housing options for the residents and for the future.

And how do you as a council put pressure on those other levels of government?

We have a few different tools at our disposal. Most of that is trying to give administration our guidance on what we want them to focus on and that is collaborating with the other levels of government, like the GNWT who hold most of the land here, and really advocating for them to put pressure on land transfers to make land available.

You’d also mentioned zoning. Can you elaborate on that?

The zoning and the development permitting process in Yellowknife is really cumbersome. It’s not super clear. It doesn’t matter if you’re building a fence or if you’re building a five-story building. The process and the policies behind it aren’t super clear to the average person. 

I think the goal there is just to make city hall easier for residents to navigate, make it easier for people to build, make it easier for people to understand the process and just be more efficient overall.

Do you think that bringing more land to market will improve affordability or are there other initiatives or ways that you would like to impact affordability?

The primary tool that the municipality has is just a bigger tax base, more land on the market, more houses sold, more businesses contributing equals lesser property taxes for residents and businesses.

Let’s move on to infrastructure and responsible growth. Tell me what you mean by that.

Well, we get some contributions from other levels of government for things like water and sewer infrastructure and all these things that the city needs that are aging out. And it’s super nice to have [the contributions] – the pool’s another great example – but I think along the way, a lot of people forget that there’s overhead and operations costs attached to that. 

Responsible growth is just ensuring that we’re taking that into consideration when we ask for money to get things built, so that we are not saddling future generations with the extreme overhead and maintenance costs that they can’t necessarily afford without raising taxes.

We’re talking about everything from water to sewer. We’re talking about roads. We’re talking about future needs like buildings and parks and playgrounds and everything. So anything really where there’s maintenance costs attached to it, we just have to be mindful of that when we’re looking for funding to build it.

In terms of actioning this, is this more of a policy change thing? Is this more, when we’re applying for these grants, we keep this in mind?

It’s a bit of both. It’s an awareness thing and a policy piece. Just making sure that the administration knows when they’re discussing these that it’s on their radar, that free money doesn’t mean free money in perpetuity. It means that there’s always going to be money tied to it, so we just have to be conscious of that. So an awareness piece and a policy piece.

What does a safe Yellowknife look like to you?

Residents deserve both compassion and safety. So community safety just means that people who are navigating neighbourhoods feel safe doing so, and people who may not exactly have a place to go feel safe trying to find a place to go. Compassion and community safety are not competing values, and I think residents deserve both. So just trying to keep both considerations in mind is super important. 

Having downtown presence and patrol presence, a vibrant downtown, more people downtown [means] maybe less public safety issues. And just ensuring that as a convener for homelessness issues, that we’re able to apply the funding that we’re receiving, put it in the right pockets and ensure that outcomes are coming from that.

For the most part, social services are more of a territorial government responsibility. Where does the municipal government have authority to take some steps to help provide services that will support more of the vulnerable population?

We’re a facilitator and a convener. We’re not really going to be providing the programs and services, but the Housing Accelerator Fund, Reaching Home funding comes to us through other levels of government where we allot it to certain NGOs and other groups, making sure it’s spent wisely and actually producing outcomes.

That’s where the city role fits. Street Outreach, all that good stuff. So just continuing to moderate those programs and be accountable for the public in that regard.

I think a lot of what you talked about with community safety is stuff that’s in progress or has already been done. You also mentioned developing a more vibrant downtown, drawing more people into the downtown core. Are there other steps that could be taken at the municipal level to improve community safety?

A lot of them are already there, whether people know about them or not, but there’s all sorts of incentives and tax breaks in place to encourage development downtown. And a busier downtown leads to a safer downtown, and it leads to a vibrant downtown.

And then anything else in relation to community safety that you would like to see council action in the next term?

Just making sure that we’re using our municipal resources wisely, like bike patrols and walking patrols. I’ve always advocated for something like a liaison officer that works closely with social services, so that there’s a bit of a connection between enforcement and social services, pointing people to the direction of resources and things like that. But that’s a bigger conversation that needs to be had.

In terms of the resources that already exist, but people might not know about them, is that something that you think the city needs to market better, or how do you work with businesses to make sure they’re accessing what’s already existing that they might not know about?

I think most people are well aware of Street Outreach and things like that for the community safety portion as well as the social services portion. But just the broader business community needs to know that there’s incentives out there to develop downtown for affordable housing. And again, a busier downtown is a vibrant downtown is a safe downtown.

The last thing you had on your list was transparent leadership and responsible governance. As an incumbent, what made you add this specifically to your list of priorities?

The big difference between now and when I ran in 2022 is I felt that I wanted to make promises that I necessarily couldn’t keep as an individual councillor. We’re a team of nine people, and we work closely with administration to make outcomes a reality. 

What had me include this is because I just wanted people to know that my philosophy wasn’t about necessarily promising things or doing things, but I’m open to conversations. I’m a good listener. Residents won’t always agree with every decision that we make, but they can guarantee that I’ll ask the difficult questions and research and go to bat for them when they come to me about an issue, and work really closely with administration to make sure that those outcomes become good outcomes. 

Public confidence is built through openness and consistency, and in my opinion, people don’t expect council to agree on everything, but they do expect council to explain why decisions are being made.

For incumbents, we’re wondering, why do you want to continue in this role?

The reason I want to continue in the role is because I was just really starting to get comfortable in the last six or eight months. I had only served for about 17 months. Once you get the policy and the procedures down, then you can finally get to work. I was getting really comfortable and then of course the election sprung. 

There’s still lots of super important work left to do. We’re entering some really exciting times right now with [North American Aerospace Defense Command] funding, [Department of National Defence] investments, potential mineral stuff, all the major projects work – Yellowknife’s going to be heavily involved in all of that. So I’d really like to see that through for a full four years.

Lastly, your elevator pitch: why should people vote for you?

I think I sold that in my transparency piece, but I’m just really open. I’m transparent. I have experience, and I think being open to a new council with new ideas is always great, but we need some experience and some leadership in those chairs. A good balance of both is ideal. 

Like I said, I’m comfortable in the role. I know how to ask the tough questions and how to work well with others. So having that good mix of experience and new ideas is ideal.