Jeffrey Carl Simpson, OC (born February 17, 1949), is a Canadian journalist. Simpson was The Globe and Mail's national affairs columnist for almost three decades. He has won all three of Canada's leading literary prizes: the Governor General's Award for non-fiction book writing, the National Magazine Award for political writing, and the National Newspaper Award for column writing. He has also won the Hyman Solomon Award for excellence in public policy journalism and the Donner Prize for the best public policy book by a Canadian. In January 2000, he became an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Simpson retired from the Globe and Mail at the end of June 2016.

Simpson was born in New York City and moved to Canada when he was 10 years old. Educated at the University of Toronto Schools, he graduated from Queen's University in 1971 in History and Political Science. There, he worked for the campus radio station CFRC and won the university's Tricolour Award in his graduating year. He then went on to the London School of Economics.

In 1972 to 1973, he worked as a Parliamentary Intern in Ottawa, where he worked for Ed Broadbent. Then, he joined The Globe and Mail.

Simpson's career with the Globe and Mail began at City Hall in Toronto and with coverage of Quebec politics. In 1977, he became a member of the paper's Ottawa, bureau and 18 months later, he was named as its Ottawa bureau chief. From 1981–1983, Simpson served as the paper's European correspondent, based in London. From January 1984 to June 2016, he wrote a daily Globe and Mail column on national affairs.

Simpson has written numerous magazine articles for such publications as Saturday Night, Report on Business Magazine, the Journal of Canadian Studies, Queen's Quarterly, and the Literary Review of Canada. He has spoken at dozens of major conferences in Canada and internationally on a variety of domestic and international issues.

Simpson is a frequent and enthusiastic participant in regular political debate on radio or television, in French and in English. He has been a guest lecturer at such universities as Oxford, Edinburgh, Harvard, Princeton, Brigham Young, Johns Hopkins, Maine, California, and more than a dozen universities in Canada.

In 1993–1994, Simpson was on leave from his column as a John S. Knight fellow at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. He has been a Skelton-Clark fellow and Brockington Visitor at Queen's University. He has also been a John V. Clyne fellow at the University of British Columbia, a distinguished visitor at the University of Alberta, and a member of the Georgetown University Leadership Seminar. He has been awarded honorary doctorates of laws from the University of British Columbia and the University of Western Ontario.