Jaiden and Justin Grandjambe secure fuel containers on the roof of a vehicle in Fort Providence, after an evacuation order was declared due to the proximity of a wildfire in Yellowknife, NWT on Aug. 17.PAT KANE/Reuters
The Northwest Territories general election this fall will likely be pushed back a month on the advice of the jurisdiction’s chief electoral officer, who has informed political leaders that wildfires are making it difficult to safely proceed as planned.
Stephen Dunbar said Monday that he recommended that NWT politicians pass legislation to delay the Oct. 3 contest. Roughly 68 per cent of the territory’s population has evacuated south as a result of smoke and wildfires, including Mr. Dunbar, who is working out of Elections Alberta’s office in Edmonton.
Mr. Dunbar expects politicians to reschedule the vote for Nov. 14. If some residents are still displaced then, Mr. Dunbar said ballots will be cast using an online system NWT developed last year. The chief electoral officer said he spent the early part of last week meeting with lawyers and consulting with his counterparts across the country before recommending a pause on the democratic process.
Mr. Dunbar said he is unaware of another time in Canada when an election was delayed on such short notice, but said this year’s fire season and mass evacuations created a situation without parallel.
“There was no other option,” he said in an interview. “We could not safely conduct an election as scheduled.”
Mr. Dunbar does not have the power to delay the election until after the writs are issued, currently scheduled for Sept. 4. If he issued the writs that day, he said he would then have to immediately withdraw them in ridings subject to evacuation orders, delaying votes in some – but not all – areas for up to three months. That is why he suggested a blanket delay.
“There was clear support for his recommendation,” Frieda Martselos, the caucus chair, said in a statement. NWT’s 19 members of the legislature operate by consensus, rather than under a party system.
The MLAs will meet Aug. 28 to reschedule the election, according to a NWT news release. The assembly will also pass a spending bill for costs related to the wildfires, which by Aug. 18 forced the majority of the territory’s population to evacuate. NWT’s MLAs will meet in Inuvik, rather than the evacuated capital of Yellowknife, with provisions made for remote participation.
The fire threatening Yellowknife, on the north shore of Great Slave Lake, is 15 kilometres from the municipal boundary, according to Mike Westwick, NWT’s wildfire information officer. He does not expect the blaze to reach the city’s outskirts within the next three days, given aerial firefighting efforts and an assist from the rain.
Fires have destroyed roughly 3.4 million hectares in NWT so far this year, forcing most of the territory’s citizens to evacuate to Alberta. The City of Calgary said Monday that it still has capacity to accommodate those in need, contrary to information NWT released late last week.
NWT’s election legislation dictates that after writs are issued, returning officers must open an office, in a convenient place, in each of the territory’s 19 electoral districts. By early last week, four communities – Hay River, Fort Smith, Enterprise, and K’atl’odeeche First Nation – in four separate electoral districts were evacuated, Mr. Dunbar noted. Now more than a dozen electoral districts are affected.
In addition to electoral requirements such as returning offices, Mr. Dunbar noted the evacuations would make campaigning difficult, as residents have fanned out over Western Canada. Legislation does not give his office the power to establish polling stations at evacuation centres.
Politicians have not issued a timeline for evacuees to return, although the mayor of Hay River, Kandis Jameson, on Sunday said it would be “weeks, not days.” Mr. Dunbar said his team settled on the November date by examining evacuation timelines of other major disasters, including the 2016 Fort McMurray fire, which displaced nearly 90,000 citizens for at least a month.
Mr. Dunbar said that once it became apparent Yellowknife would be evacuated, he and his team transferred digital forms to USB and external hard drives, which they brought with them during the evacuation. Elections NWT’s six employees are now working remotely.
Defence Minister Bill Blair said on Monday that roughly 450 Canadian Armed Forces members remain in NWT to assist with firefighting, airlift support and logistics. He said the situation is “beginning to stabilize” but remains concerning.
Mr. Blair added that Ottawa is working closely with the territorial government to reimburse eligible expenses, but that most of the support will come after NWT makes applications for the costs related to infrastructure damage, firefighting efforts and evacuations. No specific funding commitment is currently in place.
”Having to flee with your most precious personal possessions but uncertain as to whether your community will be there when you return is a very, very difficult thing for people to experience. And we want to make sure that we’re there for those people as they’re able to return to their communities,” Mr. Blair said.