Published 4:34 pm Tuesday, August 11, 2026 By Kody Ferron Local Journalism Initiative Northern News Services A former NWT MLA is sounding the alarm over the government’s decision to dismantle independent oversight of the territory’s mines and is urging the federal auditor general to scrutinize the matter. In an Aug. 11 news release from Alternatives North, erstwhile Frame Lake MLA Kevin O’Reilly called out GNWT Environment and Climate Change Minister Jay Macdonald for his decision to “quietly” shut down the environmental oversight bodies for the former Diavik and Snap Lake diamond mines, at the request of the respective mining companies. O’Reilly says these decisions were published on June 30 and 31, without the opportunity for public engagement. He also calls attention to the winding-down of Ekati diamond mine’s independent oversight. “We disagree with the minister’s decision and question how the public interest has been served,” wrote O’Reilly. “Independent oversight of large projects has been a hallmark of NWT environmental management for over 20 years. “We have every confidence in co-management, but it rarely gets the funding it requires, people don’t have resources to fully be involved in it, and governments don’t always participate in it,” he added. O’Reilly is a spokesperson for Alternatives North, a social justice advocacy group based in the NWT. “It’s rather ironic that [the] GNWT gets rid of independent oversight for itself at the request of mining companies, just when the largest diamond mine has become a public liability,” he wrote. “There are inconsistencies in the ministerial decisions to shut down independent oversight of the two diamond mines. The Snap Lake decision allows for oversight to continue into 2030 on a mine that is well advanced into closure as production stopped in 2015. The Diavik decision will see independent oversight shut down in 2027, less than a year after production stopped and before significant closure impacts may be observed or detected, and before closure monitoring has been completed.” O’Reilly also claimed that Diavik will be put in charge of designing and reviewing its own fund for independent technical reviews of its closure operations, something O’Reilly says should be the responsibility of the GNWT. He called into question the integrity of the GNWT’s ability to police the industry’s actions. “Following devolution, GNWT has not proven itself as a responsible resource manager with repeated receiverships, public liabilities and contaminated sites,” O’Reilly stated. “We need to do much better.”
Former MLA calls out GNWT for shutting down independent mining oversight
