Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I note that in the proposed mandate, on page 13, the same section that we're talking about, there is a long list of legislation that the Cabinet has proposed that we review in light of devolution. They include a new Mineral Resources Act, the amendments to the Northwest Territories Mining Regulations, the NWT Lands Act, the Commissioner's Lands Act, the Territorial Parks Act, the Petroleum Resources Act, the Oil and Gas Operations Act, the Waters Act, the Environmental Protection Act, and the Forest Management Act. That's a good list, but I don't understand why the review of the Heritage Fund Act was not included in this section. It's something that was certainly raised to me during the election as a constituent. I mentioned it in this House as part of the priorities that I ran on in the election. This has been an interesting ongoing debate, I know, in this House because every budget, it's decided how much, if anything, to actually put into the Heritage Fund. Basically, it's completely discretionary, done on a case-by-case, year-by-year basis. With devolution, we are now at a point where we are beginning to collect some of our own resource revenues, and with an increased revenue stream coming into the territorial government, we need to look at how and how much we should be devoting on a regular basis into the Heritage Fund.

Other jurisdictions have grown these over time. Alberta is not exactly a great example, but certainly, the Norway Pension Fund is now over a trillion dollars. They ensure that all of their resource revenues go into that fund. They actually have state ownership in the oil and gas sector as well, that helps put that money into the fund, but it’s provided a great deal of stability to the economy in Norway and allowed them to actually surpass Canada in terms of their standard of living. I’m not suggesting that we need to immediately jump to the kind of fund that Norway has, but in light of these new responsibilities that we have inherited, we do have a duty to ourselves and our future generations to improve upon what's in that act, make sure that there’s a defined revenue stream going into the fund, and also look at how it should be governed. Right now, it is governed through the Financial Management Board, which is fine, but most other funds that are set up in other jurisdictions have a much stronger element of public governance, even arm’s-length in some cases, so that the way that those funds are invested are reviewed on a regular basis. Some funds actually establish environmental and social screens on how the money is to be invested. I think that would be something wise and something that we may want to consider at some point, but to not have it appear in the mandate, I think, is not the way that we should be going in light of devolution. If we are going to be looking at all this other legislation, let's make sure that we also look at the Heritage Fund Act as well. Thank you, Mr. Chair.