James Delamere Lafferty (April 28, 1849 – July 29, 1920) was a Canadian physician and politician.

Lafferty served as Registrar for the Northwest Territories Medical Ordinance regulator to professionalize the practice of medicine.

[8] In Calgary, Lafferty took on the contracts to provide medical services for the CPR mainline and for the nearby Indian reservation.

Lafferty served as NWT Medical Ordinance regulator, which included the geographic regions that became the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

[9] When Alberta became a province of the Dominion of Canada, with the passage of the July 20, 1905, Alberta Act in the Canadian parliament,[10] all existing societies or associations that regulated the medical profession, dentistry, pharmaceutical chemistry and others, under the Northwest Territories (NWT) Medical Ordinance, were dissolved.

[7]: 122–32 Lafferty ran for the Liberal Party in the provisional district of Alberta in the 1887 Canadian federal election, but lost out to Conservative Donald Watson Davis.

[8] His July 20, 1920, obituary in the Calgary Albertan, described him as an "ebullient, effervescent, entertaining pro westerner [he was] a shrewd judge of character with great drive and persuasion.