I think it’s good that the public be aware of clause 4 and be prepared to take advantage of the opportunities that presents, as well as the policies that committee is recommending.
I just would like to comment on the discussion that has taken place about the various existing heritage funds. There are three that I know have been thrown out in public consultation and that many of us have referred to all of us. The first one, of course, is the Norway Pension Fund. It’s essentially the same thing referred to as a heritage fund. Its purpose is to invest parts of the large surplus generated by the Norwegian petroleum sector. I recognize that there’s an obvious difference before devolution for us in this regard. It’s to counter the effects of the future decline in income as their petroleum resources decline and to smooth out the disrupting effects of highly fluctuating oil prices, a phenomenon that we suffer from tremendously. That fund is at about $473 billion last time I looked. It could be a bit more or less now. Obviously, it’s very considerable and offers that country a security that we can only dream of. I think it’s inspiring for us to be considering that sort of goal in mind.
Which brings me to the second one, which is the Alaska Permanent Fund. It’s very similar. Also running around $35 billion. Quite a bit substantially less by more than an order of magnitude from Norway. Despite the fact that they had almost completely tapped out their North Slope oil and the pipeline is running half empty now. The reason it’s
so low is because, as my colleague has noted, Alaska gives out those dollars on a regular annual basis to every man, woman, and child in Alaska. As a result they do not have that for future generations.
Of course, the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund is the third example that we all refer to and we know that has not got rave reviews from just about anybody. It’s the lowest of all. I believe the last I heard it was about $11 billion. It could be less now as they’re running a deficit. They’ve clearly been unsuccessful at achieving the sorts of goals that we have in mind with the Heritage Fund Act.
My druthers would be that we focus on the Norway Pension Fund sort of model. That will become more viable, I think, as devolution transpires and we have the opportunity to nail down additional funds. It needs to be possibly discussed before then so that those funds can actually be directed, some proportion of those funds, into such a mechanism as our Heritage Fund. I know we did have early discussions on that but we didn’t come to resolution. I wonder if I could ask the Minister, will he be taking that discussion forward as the next step. Will he be recommending to the 17th Assembly, for example, that we begin the process in those discussions? I grant that there’s no emergency on that, but I would like to know if this government will be providing some encouragement in that direction.