The City of Yellowknife is looking to revive a management position to oversee emergencies following the worst summer for wildfires in the community’s history.
The position, which previously existed within the Public Safety Division, is something administration would like to see brought back and debated in upcoming Budget 2024 discussions, city spokesperson Sarah Sibley told Yellowknifer earlier this month.
The position has been dormant since 2021. Its role in the past was intended to guide emergency planning and management oversight functions, such as during wildfires, prolonged winter power outages and pandemics.
In the past, the city has called the role a “core function” of the municipality. It currently falls within the responsibilities of director of public safety Craig Maclean. The Public Safety Division also oversees municipal enforcement and fire and ambulance response.
“City administration is proposing to reintroduce the manager of emergency management position as part of Budget 2024 given the impact of recent evacuations to, and mass evacuation of, Yellowknife as a result of natural disasters,” Sibley stated.
The emergency management position was created in October 2018. Doug Gillard held the job until September 2020, after he was moved out of his decades-long position as Municipal Enforcement Division manager. However, with Covid-19 arising and the city wanting to save costs, the position was removed in Budget 2021.
“Emergency preparedness/management remains a core function of municipal governments and this function continues to be managed within the public safety department,” stated then-city spokesperson Alison Harrower in November 2020.
“The manager of emergency preparedness position is not included in Budget 2021. In the unprecedented circumstances of Covid-19, the administration is looking at ways to reduce the impact on taxes for residents,” Harrower added at the time.
Mayor Rebecca Alty said in an interview on Sept. 27 that any decision to bring back the position will be for council to consider when budget discussions take place. However, given that the capital city has seen continued “emergency after emergency” since 2021, the management position may be required.
“With Yellowknife being a reception centre twice this year and once last year it is definitely highlighting the increasing number of emergencies that Yellowknife is dealing with,” Alty said. “Even if it is Yellowknife acting as a reception centre, that does mean that we have to activate our emergency plan which involves a lot of work at the city staff level.
“It does seem as we go forward that we will have a growing need to prepare and respond to these (emergencies). I’m definitely looking forward to that discussion.”
There could be an option of actually adding another staff position, Alty said, partly depending on where funds are sourced.
“If we’re not able to find redundancy in another position, then this would be an added position,” she said. “But it’s too early to tell because we haven’t got to Budget 2024 to look at what the impact would be. There could be different ways to fund it.”
Budget discussions delayed
Alty said the budget approval process for 2024 won’t commence until the new year as the city needs to push back the timeline due to the city employee lockout/strike last February and March and the wildfire evacuation in August and September.
“Unfortunately, due to the lockout and the forest fires, and because we still need to approve our 2022 financial statements — hopefully by the end of October — we’ll need about two months to draft the budget,” the mayor said. “So we are looking at January, February (for) review and approval.”
Typically, the budget is passed by city council every December.
Council has yet to approve city administration’s proposal to pursue “an after action assessment of the 2023 wildfire response/mass evacuation,” which was presented during the Sept. 25 government priorities committee meeting. The city has stated that an assessment would examine “organizational and functional challenges” and identify how to improve performance for future emergency response.
Should the assessment be approved in the coming weeks, Alty said that reviving the role of manager of emergency preparedness may be needed to implement those review conclusions.
Overall, the wildfire evacuation emergency response had its leadership roles fulfilled, especially after the Canadian Armed Forces provided capacity and added its expertise, Alty said.
“We had everybody in the roles that we needed and I think the Canada Task Force 2 team doubled our capacity and provided some good subject matter experts with expertise,” she said. “But I think from the preparedness and all the work that’s going to be coming out of this after action review, it’ll be an important role to have.”