Colette Langlois was appointed by the Legislative Assembly as the Northwest Territories’ first Ombud, effective April 8, 2019, for a term of five years.
Colette brings over twenty years of public service experience, thirteen of which were at the Legislative Assembly where she held the positions of Acting Clerk, Director of Research, Library and Information Services, and Special Advisor to the Speaker and the Clerk. Prior to joining the Legislative Assembly, Colette served in several GNWT Departments, including Municipal and Community Affairs, where she led the modernization of municipal government legislation and negotiations on the development of the Tłįchǫ Community Government Act; the Division Secretariat of the Department of the Executive, where she contributed to preparations for the creation of the Nunavut Territory; and the Department of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development, where she was based in the Sahtu regional office. Colette’s recent experience also includes two seasons working on organic farms in Yukon and the Scottish Highlands.
Colette graduated from Sir John Franklin Territorial High School in Yellowknife and went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Concordia University in Montreal, and a Bachelor of Laws from McGill University. She later completed a Master of Laws at the University of Toronto, where she was a junior fellow at Massey College, and a Master of Science in Rehabilitation Science at the University of Alberta. She also holds a Certificate in Conflict Resolution: Mediation / Third Party Intervention from the Justice Institute of British Columbia. Her academic writing has been published in the Journal of Parliamentary and Political Law and the Journal of Communication Disorders.
In her spare time, Colette enjoys hiking, kayaking, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing and writing fiction. Her short stories have appeared in various North American literary journals, and she was the recipient of the 2016 McClelland & Stewart / Writers’ Trust of Canada Journey Prize.