Joe Handley wins NWT’s top job

Newly-elected members of the Northwest Territories legislative assembly saw their easiest premiership vote in many years this week, when Weledeh MLA Joe Handley walked into the premier’s job unnopposed.

Like the Nunavut assembly, the 19-member NWT legislature elects a speaker, premier and cabinet from among themselves after each election.

This time, no one wanted to run against the well-respected Joe Handley, a veteran bureaucrat who was first elected to the NWT legislature in 1999, and who served as finance minister in the last government.

Two other MLAs, Floyd Roland and Victor Allen, withdrew from the premier’s race before the Dec. 10 vote.

Handley, a Metis from northern Saskatchewan, first moved to Yellowknife in 1985 to serve as deputy minister of education under Dennis Patterson, who was then the MLA for Iqaluit and the NWT’s education minister.