N.W.T. residents surprised, again and again, by government's backroom changes

On Wednesday, residents of the Northwest Territories learned once again that the laws they were living under were altogether different from what they had been told.

In a jointly issued press release, Premier Caroline Cochrane, together with her health minister, and her chief public health officer, tried to clear up confusion she had sown by welcoming southern tourists to the territory in a live interview with CBC News Network Monday.

What they admitted, in so many words, was that the rules for who could travel to the territory had been changed nearly two weeks prior, and no one in the public had been informed.

The admission appeared to be prompted, not by a desire for disclosure, but by a live TV misstep.

But this is far from the first time the territory's legal landscape has been changed with little public notice.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cochrane's government has on at least three occasions withheld information about major changes to the territory's laws. In their aftermath, the government has been unapologetic about what are, at best, major lapses in communication with the public.

1st 'state of emergency' announced 3 days late

This pattern begins at the very outset of the crisis. On March 24, then municipal and community affairs minister Paulie Chinna declared the territory's first state of emergency granting the government extraordinary powers including warrantless search, arbitrary detention and economic controls and failed to inform the public until three days later.

That state of emergency has now been in effect for 11 weeks, extended two weeks at a time by a copied-and-pasted press release, which offers little by way of a detailed justification.

Cochrane took control over those extensions from Chinna more than two months ago, but has not offered much more detail on her thinking. In interviews, she has repeatedly cited concerns that grocery stores in remote communities could suddenly close if not for emergency legislation, offering no evidence to support this theory.

Next, government fumbles with liquor restrictions

Cochrane's government again fumbled when reversing its policy on liquor restrictions. Members of the public only learned of new limits on the purchase of alcohol when signs appeared in liquor store windows and regular MLAs posted new rules to Facebook the day of the change.

The sudden change countered weeks of government messaging that restrictions would be ineffective.

The government offered no official comment on the changes to the territory's Liquor Act until they had already been in effect for a full day.

The latest: a travel ban kerfuffle

Neither of those episodes compare with the latest confusion over travel restrictions, which has left the government unable to offer a simple explanation of the rules for travellers, days after Cochrane seemingly contradicted her own policy in an interview June 8.

After Cochrane welcomed southern tourists in a national broadcast, territorial officials spent days, in the words of one local reporter, "trying to gaslight the entire territory into believing we all misunderstood a public health order."

When officials finally admitted there had been a "shift in how the order was being implemented," residents learned the change had allegedly been made May 29 nearly two weeks before the public learned about it from Cochrane's sudden on-air announcement.

WATCH | Cochranewelcomes tourists in national television interview June 8

Cochrane on Tourism

4 years ago

Duration 1:11

Cochrane on Tourism

The "joint statement" issued Wednesday is typical of government communications around these incidents, which admit no error. No one with the government has yet acknowledged Cochrane misspoke in the interview.

Despite repeated (and ongoing) requests from CBC, no one from the government has been made available to the media to clarify. Officials are expected to respond in what is likely to be a carefully managed press conference Friday instead.

"I think there is a cultural problem in the way that we communicate that tries to spin things a certain way and eliminates nuance," said Rylund Johnson, a Yellowknife MLA who staked his campaign on greater government transparency. "It's on leadership to own them, and say when mistakes are made."

Governments will do anything they can to not admit they're wrong.- David Wasylciw, founder of OpenNWT

"Being open is about more than having the perfect message, because we don't," said David Wasylciw, the founder of OpenNWT, a transparency organization.

Wasylciw believes this latest episode is the result of an environment where government and public alike will tolerate no error from their politicians, and where the pressures of a pandemic make uncertainty politically toxic.

"Governments will do anything they can to not admit they're wrong," he said. "It's a pandemic, so everyone wants to appear calm and in control."

"My concern is, what happens with the next thing that changes?"

'Government cannot afford to be creating distrust': Democracy Watch

The confusion over travel restrictions is also reflective of another trait of the territorial government: a general aversion to risk.

Not coincidentally, the decision to "reinterpret" travel restrictions was made shortly after the Canadian Civil Liberties Association threatened mounting charter challenges to travel bans across the country, including in a letter to the N.W.T.'s Justice Minister Caroline Wawzonek on May 25.

In the weeks leading up to that letter, the chief public health officer, the premier, and the health minister all spoke to the importance of border restrictions.

But when the letter arrived, instead of saying they were considering it, or reflecting on the danger open borders could pose for residents, or even issuing a public defence, as the Yukon did, the government kept silent about it.

Yet legal challenges are far from the government's only concern. Duff Conacher, the co-founder of Democracy Watch, a watchdog group, said especially in a pandemic, governments risk far more than lawsuits if they fail to communicate policy changes clearly.

"When we're in a crisis situation, the government cannot afford to be creating distrust," he said. "You make it very difficult for the public to trust anything else."

That shouldn't be new advice. There exists a literal handbook for how to handle communications in a pandemic, produced by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in 2014.

"In communicating risk information, [trust and credibility] are your most precious assets," it reads.

"Once lost, they are difficult to regain."