Member Hay River North

Premier
Minister of Executive and Indigenous Affairs

R.J. Simpson was elected to the 20th Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly, representing the constituency of Hay River North. On December 7th, 2023, Mr. Simpson was elected Premier of the Northwest Territories.

Mr. Simpson was formerly acclaimed to the 19th Legislative Assembly and first elected into the 18th Assembly in 2015.

Mr. Simpson was Deputy Speaker of the 18th Assembly, Deputy Chair of the Standing Committee on Government Operations, and the Chair of the Special Committee on Transition Matters. Mr. Simpson was also a member of the Standing Committee on Priorities and Planning and the Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment.

Mr. Simpson is a lifelong resident of Hay River After graduating from Diamond Jenness Secondary School in 1998 Mr. Simpson went on to obtain a Bachelor of Arts from MacEwan University and a law degree from the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Law.

Mr. Simpson has previously worked with the Government of Canada, Northern Transportation Company Ltd, Métis Nation Local 51, and Maskwa Engineering.

While at law school, Mr. Simpson was the President of the Aboriginal Law Students’ Association. He has also served on the board of the Soaring Eagle Friendship Centre in Hay River and volunteered with the Canada-Ghana Education Project.

Hay River North Electoral District

Committees

R.J. Simpson
Hay River North
Member's Office

Yellowknife NT X1A 2L9
Canada

P.O. Box
1320
Constituency Office

62, promenade Woodland, bureau 104
Hay River Nord NT X0E 1G1
Canada

Minister
Premier of the Northwest Territories, Minister of Executive and Indigenous Affairs, Minister of Justice, Government House Leader

Statements in Debates

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 144)

Thank you. So if someone a senior needs assistance with their seniors home heating and they run out of their seniors home heating subsidy, they can always apply for income assistance and there's the chance that they're they could be topped off. I've seen that a number of times. As an MLA, I've had a number of constituents who they used all of their senior home heating subsidy and income assistance was able to provide them support. I've had as Minister, I've seen that come across my desk from every region in the territory and for the most part, they're always provided with support. We don't...

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 144)

Thank you. And I did make a statement in the House here. There was not associated communications that came with that. Those will happen later in the year. I'll just tell you it shows me the value of our comms teams because, you know, I've said some I made a big announcement but we didn't have any associated communication materials coming out and no one knows about it outside of this room basically. So I just want to kudos to our comms team there.

But the program changes are significant. It's more than just, you know, changing some dollar amounts. There's a lot of regulatory changes that have...

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 144)

Thank you. That number is relatively consistent because it is based on the school funding formula which is based on the number of students in the territory. And so that number hasn't varied greatly so that's why you see that consistency there. The Member is pointing out that, you know, there's often discussion about the need for more supports for inclusive schooling. And so the department is, early in the new government I understand, going be undertaking a review of their supports. You know, we've run into a number of issues. And as we face some of the labour market challenges and we can't get...

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 144)

So I believe those are for the we have rolled out a child care fee reduction subsidy, and we provided child care operators with administrative funds so that they could hire administrative support to help them with some of that reporting. So that would account for those increases. Thank you.

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 144)

Thank you. And yes, we did look at that initially. Again, as I told as I told the Member before, we shoot for the stars and we get chopped down at every juncture. So we still wound up with an excellent program but we couldn't get everything in this program that we wanted given our financial situation. But I think we wound up with I would say we already had we already currently have the best student financial assistance program in Canada, and we're just going to leave everyone in the dust come the next school year. Thank you.

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 144)

Thank you. So when the money goes into the pot, that's the money we have. So it doesn't matter where it comes from. If it's from a carbon tax, if it's from, you know, permit fees or anything like that. So we look at what we have and what we can do with it. I have not instructed the department to spend their energy working on guaranteed basic income given that we are expending a lot of energy working on the income assistance program changes. I did try to take the approach of lessening the reducing the number of times that an individual might be cut off from income assistance. You know, as MLAs...

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 144)

Thank you. So there was funding for that, like in this current fiscal year but that is sunsetting. Originally, this project was supposed to be completed by the end of this term and so that funding is sunsetting. But going forward, from what has been learned during this process the department has a better handle on how things work and will be able to fund that work internally going forward. Thank you.

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 144)

Thank you. I would love to see a school of language revitalization. There are many efforts going on around the territory. I've spoken about things like the mentor apprentice program. The department has put time and resources into developing postsecondary courses related to languages and hopefully those can be implemented at some point in the future. I mean, there's a lot of ground covered in there, but we do support the revitalization of Indigenous languages. There's great efforts going towards ensuring that we are increasing the number of speakers the best we can, and we'll continue those...

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 144)

Yes, that is found in there as well. We've increased the supplementary grant and the remissible loan to that 80 percent threshold, and that's included in there. We've tied those numbers to the market basket measure for food and shelter. So there is something that, you know, we can always refer back to. It's not an arbitrary number. We've removed the number of semesters that Indigenous students can receive the supplementary grant, and that's costed out in there as well. We have looked yes, we've also looked at the student suspension. So if a student currently doesn't complete 60 percent of a...

Debates of , 19th Assembly, 2nd Session (day 144)

Thank you. You know, there were numbers batted around in previous years. There was not a number that I felt that I would be able to put forward given our fiscal constraints so instead what we did is we looked at revamping the income assistance program, creating a new program for seniors and persons with disability that is really much more like a guaranteed basic income because those individuals will only have to apply once a year and not report their income monthly. So I can leave it at that. Thank you.