Fort Simpson examines introduction of ‘complete’ taxi bylaw

The mayor of Fort Simpson says the village is looking to issue permits to taxi drivers as a means of protecting vulnerable community members.

At a village council meeting on Monday evening, Mayor Les Wright said someone had asked him what the village’s bylaw says about drivers who have convictions.

After staff looked into that, the mayor said, the conclusion was “apparently we don’t have, let’s say, a complete bylaw.”

Village senior administrator Andre Larabie said only pages two and four of an existing taxi bylaw could be found.

“We’re not going to worry about what people charge or the age of your vehicles,” said Wright. “We’ll just say that you have to have a class four chauffeur’s licence to drive, criminal records check, that sort of thing.”

Councillor Cheryl Cli suggested the bylaw should prevent anyone with convictions against vulnerable people – such as children – from obtaining a licence to drive a taxi in Fort Simpson.

Mitch Gast, the village’s operations manager, said taxi drivers would have to provide a clean driver’s licence abstract and a criminal record clear of specific convictions.

Then, it would be up to company owners to ensure their drivers have a licence from the village.

“I think it’s a great idea,” said Cli.

“This community, we’ve had many, many taxi services throughout the years, and I’m quite shocked that we’ve never had a bylaw.”

Gast said the village would borrow language from the taxi bylaws of other communities, such as Yellowknife, and a draft would be ready by the next regular council meeting.

‘Inappropriate’ discussion

Wright said the taxi bylaw question was raised by community members who reported seeing one of the village’s cab drivers named on a recent criminal court docket.

Finno Celestin, who has run the village’s taxi service for the past three years, told Cabin Radio it was unfair for the mayor to bring up the issue in the way he did, describing it as feeling like a personal attack.

Celestin had faced criminal charges in 2025, though he said the charges against him were dropped.

“It’s a very tough thing to have your name there on that official court docket document, but to have people speculate and to make their opinions like that – and to bring it as far as to a council meeting in the inappropriate way that it was done – was pretty difficult,” said Celestin.

“There are other matters in Fort Simpson that are more urgent than having a bylaw for a taxi.”

In an interview with Cabin Radio, Wright said he didn’t raise the issue to hurt anyone in particular.

“We’re bringing it up because there is no taxi bylaw and we need one,” said Wright.

“We did not mention anybody’s name [during Monday’s meeting], we just said a taxi driver got on the docket. That’s all public knowledge, anybody can go look at what’s on the docket.”

Other priorities

Some councillors expressed surprise to see the taxi bylaw on the agenda for the meeting, since it hadn’t been discussed by council previously.

“It’s not something that we’ve ever talked about, it just came up,” said councillor Troy Bellefontaine.

“I guess we’re saying that a couple people mentioned it, but people mention a lot of things, and we’ve been discussing how we’ve got so many bylaws that need to be updated.”

He expressed concern that the senior administrator was being directed to work on this project when, earlier in the meeting, it was noted that staff were short on time to work on things like expired leases with the village’s curling club and Seven Spruce Golf Club.

“I think these things should be coming to council so that we can decide together: ‘We think this is something that should be going forward,’ because why this one particular bylaw over other things that are going on in the community?” said Bellefontaine.