Yellowknife The Northwest Territories is in the federal electoral riding of Northwest Territories and has one Member of Parliament and one Senator, currently Michael McLeod and the senate seat is vacant after the resignation of Nick Sibbeston in 2017. Yellowknife is home to seven of the 19 electoral districts in the Northwest Territories, the Frame Lake, Great Slave, Kam Lake, Range Lake, Yellowknife Centre, Yellowknife North and Yellowknife South ridings. As the largest city in the Northwest Territories, Yellowknife is the hub for mining, industry, transportation, communications, education, health, tourism, commerce, and government activity in the territory. Historically, Yellowknife's economic growth
Yellowknife Yellowknife began with the discovery of diamonds north of the city in 1991. The last of the gold mines in Yellowknife closed in 2004. Today, Yellowknife is primarily a government town and a service centre for the diamond mines. On April 1, 1999, its purview as capital of the NWT was reduced when the territory of Nunavut was split from the NWT. As a result, jurisdiction for that region of Canada was transferred to the new capital city of Iqaluit. Consequently, Yellowknife lost its standing as the Canadian capital city with the smallest population. Yellowknife is on the Canadian Shield,