Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Finance and are in relation to the recently released public consultation paper on an NWT Heritage Fund. I want to start by saying it’s really great to see this out. It’s something Members of this House have been pushing for and I’m happy to see it finally happening.
One of the things we’re dealing with is with exceptionally low royalty rates in the Northwest Territories. Our resources are tending to leave faster and faster and our diamond mines are a good example of that. So how can we collect revenue to fill up a Heritage Fund? The Minister in his paper has identified that a resource tax is a possibility, but he goes on to state that this would be considered double taxation of resource development and that’s a bit of a barrier. I wonder if I could get him to explain that to me. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister responsible for Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The concern would be that they’re already paying taxes and that if we, in addition to the federal government who controls all the royalty taxation, in addition to that put on another tax, it would possibly be seen to be as the Member characterized. We also have to look at the current economic circumstances.
I think the key goal for us first is to decide the structure and shape and the criteria for a fund, what it’s going to look like, how it’s going to be set up, how tight is it going to be, is it going to be like the Norway model, and then the discussion about what kind of funds we’ll put in there will be the secondary discussion. Thank you.
Thank you. I appreciate the comments from the Minister. I’m simply responding to what’s in here and I’m also of the opinion that those are parallel processes. We could, you know, wait until the cows come home and do things one after the other and take forever to get this going, but I think there’s a desire to get it going quickly and effectively. So I hope we can have that discussion in parallel.
Would the Minister agree that certainly there are corporations that are typically taxed in a number of ways and that in fact a resource tax could be designed to tax the excess profit? So in other words, after all of the expenses, normal taxes and so on, royalties have been paid -- and this is when there are exceptional profits -- my understanding is that resource tax could be applied to excess profits. Would the Minister agree that that’s a possibility for consideration here? Mahsi.
Thank you. I would agree that this is a consultation process and we are open to listen to and engage in discussion on any or all options, the same as we indicated at the revenue round table that we had in the fall. The focus then was to look at tax shifting. As we set up the Heritage Fund, looking forward into the future, a wide-ranging discussion would definitely be helpful as we decide on both the structure and what final decisions would be agreed to in terms of putting money into a Heritage Fund. Thank you.
Thank you again to the Minister for those comments. I think there has been interest, as the Minister has reflected, and my interest here is really how can we start to fill this fund up. So I appreciate his discussion.
The Minister goes on in the report to suggest that there’s possible consideration for the introduction of other taxes. To me, I can think of a capital tax as a possibility there. I’m just wondering if the Minister had any other things in mind or his advisors had provided ideas on what those other taxes might be. Mahsi.
We’re engaged in a number of initiatives that have tax implications. Firstly, coming out of the last October round table we agreed to look at what’s possible in terms of tax shifting. Since then, within existing tax structure, given the fact that we’re still struggling through a recession, to see what may be possible in terms of tax shifting within the existing tax structure. We’ve also since then announced that we’re going to be renewing and coming forward with a plan to have a full discussion on the Greenhouse Gas Strategy, which is going to lead us into the discussion tied into carbon, carbon taxes, standards, targets, all which possibly have tax implications. We also have the Heritage Fund proposal out there for discussion. We recognize as well that there’s going to be a number of suggestions about how we would possibly put money into that that also has tax implications.
We have to look at all those. The Member is aware of some of the issues we were talking about with the Greenhouse Gas Strategy, for example, so we have to be mindful of these processes, parallel processes as the Member referred to them, to make sure that we’re as organized on this and clear as possible.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate that response. I didn’t have anything specific in mind. It was a wide open question.
Finally, I know there is a lot of interest in this and I assume that the Minister will have some sort of consultation strategy laid out. Is the Minister meeting with groups or is that an open invitation to meet with groups and what is the best way the public can participate in this discussion?
We’ve distributed the proposal far and wide. It’s on our website. We’re looking for feedback that people may wish to give us. If there are specific requests, then we’ll definitely entertain those. We’re encouraging people to send us e-mails, to write, to talk to your MLA, talk to your mayor, talk to your Association of Communities, whoever they would like to carry the message for them. We’re not planning a major dog and pony show across the North. We will look at responding to specific requests. The timeline is April 30th. We’re looking forward to getting some very valuable feedback.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
