Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to thank my colleague from Frame Lake and the Minister for MACA for answering the questions. And I look forward to an after-action review, and I'm happy to hear that the public's involved. Although I just have a few clarifying questions on why exactly the city of Yellowknife evacuation order was issued by the GNWT and what exactly occurred in that very rapid 24hour period there. So my first question is for the Minister of MACA. Can he explain why all the other communities were community evacuation orders, but the capital region was done by the GNWT, why that was the case? Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Yellowknife North. Minister responsible for MACA.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this is probably going to be a little bit of a longer answer, and I apologize to the House, but we need to get the information out there.
The GNWT used the territorial state of emergency. The decision was based on a combination of multiple factors and not one factor. They included starting in May, the NWT had already experienced multiple community evacuations. In one week alone, just before Yellowknife evacuation orders had been issued, Enterprise, Fort Smith, Hay River, Jean Marie, K'atlodeeche First Nation had also learned been evacuated and we've also seen the devastation that happened in Enterprise. Very aggressive and unpredicted wildfire behaviour near Yellowknife area was causing significant concerns to certain to very knowledgeable firefighters. Previous wildfires had, in fact, critical infrastructure like the fibre optic link, highways, impacted communications and transit corridors. The fire break that was here around Yellowknife today were not in place when those evacuation orders were issued. There were potentially risk to the highway and airport given the current fire conditions. There were many factors that led to Yellowknife evacuations but, ultimately, the right decision was made. Given the same information that I had today from or when we did it, I'd do it again twice on Sunday, Mr. Speaker. The city is right from their perspective. The NWT health and social services is right from their perspective. But the GNWT had considered all perspectives. The fire conditions, one road, one airport, system capacity, etcetera. Conversations about what was said are largely irrelevant because of how quickly the situation changed from Sunday to Thursday, the day before the Yellowknife evacuation. But the city did formally ask for assistance with its shelter in place and a scenario for a city evacuation on the 15th, the day before the evacuation order was issued.
Mr. Speaker, NWTHSSA was focusing on the hospital. They had patients there. They had longterm patients. They also had 60 evacuees from Hay River in Fort Smith that they had to get out there. So to do a shelter in place and to set up an evacuation centre, they would not be able to do that. So when the city came to us, we sat there and looked at everything. We looked at every avenue, what the situation was happening, and we made the decision that we had the time to evacuate the community, we'd give the 48 hours to get the community out because the fire was coming. 15 and 11. 85 was burning as well. These situations were occurring. If 15 and 11 connected, that highway would have been closed off. Then we would have problems with the air quality in for our residents. We'd also have the problem of getting to use the airport because we were seeing it, and the predictions were that Saturday it was going to hit, and we were going to see all the problems there. So that's why the decision was made moving forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate that answer. And, you know, I appreciate the Minister made the decision, and he stands by it. I guess I'm still a little confused about the jurisdictional question. You know, Hay River has issued multiple evacuations in the last couple years and it's always the town of Hay River. And there is an understanding that's who does it. I don't believe we would ever step in front and evacuate their town without them doing that first, but that's what occurred in Yellowknife. And I'm just wondering, you know, god forbid we ever have an evacuation, whose call is it at the end of the day and is there a reason that the exception was made in Yellowknife?
For all the reasons the Minister just said, it seems to me he could have gone to the mayor, I'm asking you to issue an evacuation order. That's the chain of how we did this everywhere else. So I'm just is going forward, that's what we would do, or is it when we evacuate the capital, it's a GNWT decision; is that the current process? Thank you.
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 order or the state of emergency was to be able for us to get the tools that we needed. So we were able to declare the state of emergency. Then we looked at it. At TEMO, we brought in the federal government. So the process, it starts out local, goes right to the territories, and then we look at the federal or ask our counterparts across the country to work with us. We had a situation where we had the military in with us. We had a situation where we were looking at sheltering in place. That wasn't a viable option. So at that point in time, we declared with the state of emergency. Hay River, Fort Smith, K'atlodeeche, we were not under a state of emergency at that point in time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North. Oral questions. Member for Hay River South.
