Question 1 - Yellowknife is entering a significant economic transition as the NWT's diamond mining industry changes, with two mines now moving through closure while many of the major projects expected to create new economic opportunities are still several years from full construction. What should Yellowknife be doing now to navigate this transition and position the community for long-term economic success?

I think there will be new mines opening up but if we’re really hoping to build a sustainable economy up here to support a larger population, we have to look beyond a private sector that relies so heavily on resource extraction. I think there’s a watertight environmental and moral argument for doing this, but there’s also a strong economic case to avoid dependency on commodities that are traded globally at prices that we can never hope to control. We’ve seen how this affects the oil and gas industry in Canada and of course we’ve seen how it affected our diamond industry. Diversification is the holy grail of economic development but it’s a lot easier to say than to achieve.

At the city level I think there are a few positive things we can do:

1. We can revise our procurement policies to give local and indigenous businesses an advantage and use these same policies to encourage other companies to establish a presence in Yellowknife with an office and staff. Lots of municipalities in Canada have procurement policies that do this and we can borrow some to get a head start.
2. We can look at breaking up big contracts for construction to make them more accessible to local companies.
3. We can switch our competitive bid evaluation process from a lowest fee based model to a median fee based model to give northern businesses with higher costs and better knowledge of local conditions a better chance of winning. This strategy should also pay dividends for the taxpayer in the long term as it has been shown to reduce cost overruns due to change orders and deliver better overall value for large projects.
4. If we can bring more affordable housing to market we make it easier for people to live in the city on lower incomes. We make it less risky to take a chance and open a business. The city can help with this by making the development permitting and appeals process simpler and more transparent with clearer, more definitive bylaws.

I think we can also really push hard on food security and local food production so that we’re a little better protected from cost increases in food basics and the fuel we need to bring them here. This can also help to create some microbusinesses too.

Question 2 - Crime and public safety concerns are also creating direct costs for Yellowknife businesses through theft, property damage and increased spending on security and other measures to protect their employees and property. As a member of City Council, how would you address the impact these issues are having on the business community?

Increase housing availability across the housing continuum (emergency shelter-transitional housing-supportive housing- market housing). I live in the nucleus of downtown and I'm the former owner of the Fat Fox. I know as well as anyone in this city that it can be challenging to cope with theft and nuisance crime as a downtown.

However, I'm getting a little tired of how questions around safety and homelessness are being framed in this race. Whose safety are we talking about? It is our homeless citizens who are overwhelmingly the victims of violent crime in this city and whose general safety is entirely compromised by being forced to live in encampments. Until we figure out how to get these people into safe and secure housing, everything else is just window dressing. I do not support the idea of increased foot patrols or an of "ambassador" program if this includes and sort of delegated authority to move or otherwise interfere with our street involved population. Until these people have a place to go, I fail to see any benefit in funding low-level harassment of them with tax-payer money.

Question 3 - Yellowknife needs more development to support housing, economic growth and the long-term needs of the community, but development can involve difficult trade-offs and face barriers that prevent projects from moving forward. As a member of City Council, how would you approach growth and development in Yellowknife?

I would pursue infill development and greenfield opportunities such as Frame Lake South. We need both approaches to meaningfully tackle our housing crunch and to accommodate the growth our city will need to achieve to afford to maintain the new infrastructure we are planning to build with federal support. We need infill to densify our downtown and increase foot traffic. We also need infill to provide affordable housing and starter homes for people who don't want or cannot afford to be dependent on owning a vehicle. To be abundantly clear, I support development in the Con/Burwash neighborhood, and Old Town/School Draw. as was recently proposed.

I believe we need to improve clarity and certainty in our community plan and related bylaws to reduce the impact of ad-hoc NIMBYism. We can improve the way we develop our community plans with our citizens to make them more democratic. What is a community plan if not a collection of shared goals and reasonable compromises that we are prepared to make to improve our whole city? By it's very nature, a community plan should not try to give everybody what they want but should find a balance we can all support. Our current system gives privileged consideration to those community groups with the resources and connections to advocate effectively for themselves and it does this plainly at the expense of those who don't. I would like to see this come to an end.

Question 4 - The major projects expected in the North will require a larger and more diverse workforce in the years ahead. How should Yellowknife prepare its residents and businesses to participate in and benefit from those opportunities?

At the risk of repeating myself, I think the solution is more housing to restore the overall affordability our city needs to support a diversified economy and the changes to our procurement approach I mentioned above. We'll never have a humming downtown full of lively retail businesses and restaurants if people cannot afford to live in the city on the sorts of wages and profits these businesses typically produce.

When it comes to preparing for this much talked about federal investment, I think we need to prepare to dig in and fight for investment that supports a much more holistic idea of what a city needs to thrive. Maybe we won't be able to shake down Defense Construction Canada for money to build a performing arts center but I'll promise to give it my best shot.

As a city councilor, I can make sure that we are advocating for ourselves effectively in our dealings with Ottawa and we should do this now while we have a strong hand to play. Operational funding for city facilities is a big challenge right now and will continue to be a challenge as we grow. I think we should fight for more capital funding for building upgrades to reduce the city’s operational and energy costs. New programming spaces might even create new revenue. We can keep pushing to piggy-back some icing-on-the-cake projects on top of the infrastructure upgrades being discussed. If Yellowknife is crucial to Canadian sovereignty, then help us build our city to last.