After receiving a federal funding boost, the N.W.T. promised construction on the bridge's replacement would start in 2022 and be completed by 2024. Yet over a year later, that work hasn't even begin.
With his own town battling a surge in drug poisonings, Rocky Simpson said in the N.W.T. legislature on Wednesday that detox and aftercare services could be ‘the difference between life and death.’
The government of the Northwest Territories ended its contract with Poundmaker’s Lodge Treatment Centres, the only option the territory had that advertised treatment specifically for Indigenous clients. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Services said the contract was terminated at Poundmaker's request.
Kam Lake MLA Caitlin Cleveland called the lack of service a safety concern and said the stretch of highway between Yellowknife and Behchokǫ̀ is where most of the N.W.T.’s traffic fatalities occur.
About a dozen residents spoke to the territory's standing committee on social development in Behchokǫ̀, N.W.T. on Monday about housing and homelessness prevention. It was the third and final public hearing organized by the committee.