N.W.T. negotiating terms with Alta. to be better informed about its waterways for over a year

More than a year since the Northwest Territories asked Alberta to keep it better informed about spills that could impact its water, the province and territory still haven't agreed on what that will mean. 

In April 2024, the territory proposed updates to "notification protocols" in its shared transboundary water agreement — a commitment to manage water sustainably and communicate changes that increase the risk of harm to water flowing north across the border. 

Fifteen months later, N.W.T. Environment Minister Jay Macdonald said they're still working on it but that the territory's relationship with Alberta is strong. 

"It's been certainly very positive and productive within the last year," he said.

The proposed changes suggest trigger points that would require Alberta to alert the N.W.T. based on clear metrics. That's a change from the current agreement, where Alberta is required to notify the N.W.T. of developments "that might affect the ecological integrity of the aquatic system," language that some experts have said leaves it to Alberta to decide what incidents might impact the N.W.T.

One N.W.T. resident says he's not surprised by the delay. 

Jack VanCamp lives in Fort Smith where drinking water comes from the Slave River that flows from northern Alberta. Testing continues to show that the water is safe to drink, but VanCamp, also a former executive director of the Mackenzie River Basin Board, said he wonders how much of that is good management and how much is luck.

"We don't have the ability to control what goes into our water upstream and we can't trust people who have that ability," he said.

Until agreements like these have clear rules and consequences, VanCamp said he doesn't see that changing. 

"We're feeling pretty vulnerable," he said.  

If Alberta does agree to the territory's updates, it's unlikely to introduce consequences, though Macdonald declined to speak on specifics while negotiating. 

The proposed changes are in response to a tailings leak at Imperial Oil's Kearl facility, one of the largest oilsands spills in Alberta history. 

In 2023, the N.W.T's then-environment minister said he learned of the leak through the media. Local First Nations and the federal government were also not notified of the leak. 

At a news conference on July 4, Rebecca Schulz, Alberta's minister of environment and protected areas, said the province takes its relationship with the N.W.T. seriously and that communication after the Kearl incident was unacceptable. She said she committed to Macdonald that there would be an open line of communication about the facility moving forward.    

Macdonald said although there's no updates to the agreement, and no timeline on when those updates might come, communication between the province and territory has improved.

"We're certainly communicating much better than we were at the time of the Kearl incident," he said.