Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m in favour of this bill in general. I don’t think it’s the best thing we could have done, but I think it’s a very good start.
Really the issue at hand is our non-renewable resources in particular are being shipped out of the Northwest Territories typically with very little value added despite our best efforts, and at really an incredible rate, and these are some of our most finite resources. We’ve learned from others that if we’re going to ensure intergenerational benefits, it must be done explicitly and with much forethought, and a Heritage Fund seems like a really appropriate way to make this happen.
Essentially what we are doing here is as we transform these assets, which are in the ground or on the land, into a financial form or some value that gets shipped immediately out we take some proportion of that value and nail it down, put it into this account and let it build in value for future residents who will not have the benefits that we do earlier in the process of extracting our renewable resources.
I think obviously filling the fund, getting some dollars in there is a key consideration, and I have not heard much clear thinking on that or consideration of how we’re going to do that. I and others have made suggestions of such things as resource tax or a proportion of our corporate tax and so on. Wherever non-renewable revenues exist and flow, we should be somehow tapping into those to start putting dollars into these funds. Now we certainly will always need every cent, as the Minister says, and hard decisions do need to be made. So, really, my first question for the Minister is: how does this bill provide guidance for the development of regulations concerning the management of the fund and all of the decisions that must go into that?