Shane Thompson

Member Nahendeh

Speaker

Shane Thompson was re-elected to the 20th Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly after serving in the 18th and 19th Assemblies representing the constituency of Nahendeh. Mr. Thompson is the Honorable Speaker of the 20th Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly.

Mr. Thompson was first elected to the 18th Assembly in November 2015 and served as Chair of the Standing Committee on Social Development. Mr. Thompson was also a member of the Standing Committee on Priorities and Planning, the Standing Committee on Rules and Procedures, and the Striking Committee.

Mr. Thompson was born on July 11, 1963, in Hay River. He has lived in Kugluktuk (Coppermine), Inuvik, Hay River, and in Edmonton, while at the University of Alberta. Fort Simpson has been his home since 1992.

Mr. Thompson previously served two terms (three years each) as an elected official with the Fort Simpson District Education Authority, spending the last four years as the chairperson. Over the past 35 years, he has served on various community and territorial boards.

Mr. Thompson was employed as the Senior Sport and Recreation Coordinator with Municipal and Community Affairs (GNWT) in the Deh Cho region before being elected as a Member.

Mr. Thompson completed the Community Recreation Leaders Program at Arctic College in 1989 and is currently working on a Masters Certificate on Evaluation at the University of Victoria and Carleton University. He also completed three years towards an Education degree at the University of Alberta.

Mr. Thompson is an active volunteer with Northern Youth Aboard, CBET and Fundamental Movement, and HIGH FIVE®. As well, he is a past member of the Sport North Federation Board, NWT Softball and of NWTRPA, and the past president of Seven Spruce Golf Course.

Mr. Thompson is the father of seven children - five daughters and two sons – and has nine grandchildren.

He has been a Justice of the Peace since 1991.

Nahendeh Electoral District

Committees

Nahendeh
Member's Office

Yellowknife NT X1A 2L9
Canada

P.O. Box
1320
Email
Extension
11128
Constituency Office

9706-100th Street
Fort Simpson NT X0E 0N0
Canada

Phone

Statements in Debates

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 162)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So, Mr. Speaker, like I said, we do have a hosting grant that's up to $40,000. We again, that's why we're telling people with evacuation centres there are certain communities that are host friendly and those ones that aren't. We understand that we seen people go into communities, so we provided that. We did our superintendent reached out to Fort Res, worked with them. We also had the food security with ITI working with them to see if we needed to do those things. So I can also tell you that I've reached out to the federal government, Indigenous Service Canada, talked...

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 162)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. She's probably not going to like answer. Unfortunately, when people have their insurance, that's the program that they have to do and they have to look into it. Unfortunately, I have insurance and I haven't even looked at mine until after what we've been dealing with. So unfortunately, the disaster financial assistance is last resort. If you have insurance, you need to go to your insurance company. And I am sorry to the residents that have higher deductibles or don't have the same supports, it's unfortunate, but that's the insurance companies that you have to deal with...

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 162)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's going to be a little bit of a longwinded answer. There was a whole bunch of information shared there that seemed to be messy. First of all, let's talk about the lineup. Yes, it was long. We understood that. There was planes. They were trying to get our crews in there. But the second day, as people we had people get on the planes that were told to go back home the first day. The second day they got onto the plane. They were able to do that. We had people registering and getting on the planes that way there.

In regards to the question that the Member asked there was...

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 162)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don't know if he's asking me to provide one or to talk about it now. So the Member is asking me to provide a flow chart; yeah, we will work on that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 162)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member talked about those two brothers who were helping and, again, I say thank you very much to them for the work that they did there.

Mr. Speaker, after the wildfire hit the community, many of the flareups that were associated with this were structural fires. Our wildfire firefighters are not trained in this. That there was very much about structural firefighters that need to do the work there.

While meeting with the hamlet, we are made aware of these concerns and are committed to looking into this in an after-action review. ECC is still working on...

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 162)

Thank you. I think the Member answered his question. He's correct. But it did depends. If it's it's an insurance company it's with the insurance company. If it's they don't have insurance, it would be with the Pathfinder. And we are looking at trying to get a Pathfinder strictly for Enterprise because what we found is having Pathfinders specifically in the communities that were impacted seemed to be working better than not. So we are looking at getting a Pathfinder for specifically for Enterprise. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 162)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to state again that the fire was actioned as conditions allowed from start on August 2nd. The tragic event on August 13th were because of the environmental conditions and extreme wind event. Wind gusted higher than forecasted in the area that already had severe drought and burning conditions. Our team worked with the best information available from the beginning of this fire and used the tools and approaches available to us. The unfortunate reality is that we had a perfect storm of buildup of forest fuel, very high drought codes, and extreme...

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 162)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, first and foremost, it's the community. Hay River evacuated that. They called evacuation. What happened there, we declared a state of emergency. We declared a state of emergency not because of just Yellowknife. We had Inuvik being threatened. We had Kakisa. We had Jean Marie. We evacuated Hay River, Fort Smith, and K'atlodeeche First Nation, Enterprise. We were seeing we're not like Alberta. We don't have all these aircrafts that we needed and we were sitting there seeing that we needed to get these aircrafts to be able to do that. Part of the evacuation...

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 162)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, yes, we've already started to turn our attention to the lessons learned on the emergency management side. People have been taking notes. We've been working with the municipalities, hearing things that work really well, and things that we can improve on. There will be an independent third party review. It is a standard practice in all jurisdictions to conduct an after-action review after disaster events to examine what happened, what worked, and what didn't, and to make recommendations for improvements going forward. The 2023 wildfire after-action review is...

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 162)

Thank you. I'm going to answer the caribou question. The other one is a different one, and I'll just go on to that later, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in regards to the caribou, the traditional knowledge, we work with our Indigenous governments about caribou. We talk about that. We talk about how we protect it. We talk about the environment. We see where the area is that we need to protect. What we need to do is make sure our caribou survives for generations to come. So it's just not now. Yes, we have had the mobile zone, but that there was what we worked with the Indigenous governments on there...