Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this week, the Standing Committee on Social Development had received a presentation from an academic on universal basic income which was, I think, informative for many members. This is something I've long been supportive of. One way we could make it work in the Northwest Territories is through a resource dividend. This is something they do in Alaska, something that we could make work and have an easy way of funding and providing financial relief to everyone in the Northwest Territories. Is the Minister of Finance open to developing exploring this idea in this Chamber today? Thank you.
Minister of Finance.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So, Mr. Speaker, if I'm understanding correctly I'm being asked if we would have a universal basic income, which a universal basic income means it's an amount paid to every single person regardless of their income status, regardless of their personal home household income, wealthy or otherwise, and that would then come from, of course, government coffers. So I just want to make sure that we're clear that universal basic income and guaranteed basic income are not necessarily the same thing. So let's start the conversation and make sure that we are talking about the same thing. Everyone, regardless of income, getting some money from the government, just because? Thanks.
I believe I'm being asked a question, Mr. Speaker, so I'll clarify. A resource dividend would be paid out to everyone in the Northwest Territories just like they have in Alaska. That's done through interest. Is the Minister willing to make changes to the heritage fund so we can extract interest from our investments and pay it out to Northerners? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If we want to have a discussion, that means questions back and forth. So, well, if we're going to do that, Mr. Speaker, right now, I think it's also well-known we have, really, three large diamond mines that provide all of the royalties in the Northwest Territories, one of which is on the verge of closure; the other two are staying open for now but it's been pretty clear, and said many times here, that that shelf life is coming due fairly quickly. So in terms of what we do with that resource income, firstly, it's not perhaps as big as I would like it to be. But, secondly, it is one of the very few owned source revenues that we have in it the Northwest Territories. Now as for what Alaska is doing, there's an awful lot of difference in terms of the regulatory space, political space, financial space, economic space, population space. So not sure that's going to be the right comparison. But if we want to take one of the few streams of owned source revenue of the Government of the Northwest Territories and just split it up into cheques for everybody, that is a much bigger conversation than just here. But I gather that that's where we're at. So I guess we'll have to see where the Member wants to go with that next. Thank you.
Well, the Minister thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister makes it seem like I want to give free money to everyone, and that's not the point here. The point here is to get a return on our investments. The heritage fund isn't working. It's been losing money for years. What's the Minister's plan to fix it? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So now we're onto the heritage fund. Mr. Speaker, the heritage fund, in it right now, I believe, has around $40 million. It's a fund that is, yes, meant well, it's meant to be where we put a portion of the resource revenues that we do get here in the Northwest Territories. It was never meant to be something that we would zero out or hand out dollars at a time or cheques at a time. There are jurisdictions in this country, for example Alberta, where they have at times of great wealth, due to their resource situation, essentially handed out money to residents, and there are different political beliefs as to the effectiveness of that as far as being a good use of public dollars. That is a much, again, larger political conversation in terms of whether that is an effective use of public funds to achieve the goals of equity and, you know, collective good, if that's a good way to ensure that people are having access to health care and education, which are done better on a large scale, or if, in fact, it should just go one by one by one.
Mr. Speaker, the heritage fund is coming up shortly in the Department of Finance. I don't know that it is losing money so that might be the response that I'll end with. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister of Finance. Final supplementary. Member from Range Lake.
Well, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you for the Minister for joining me in this impromptu debate. Mr. Speaker, if not if we can't do a UBI, can we do a universal can we pilot a guaranteed income program, which the Minister spoke of the differences between the two, so can we do that instead of UBI? She seems to be lukewarm on UBI. Can we get guaranteed income in the pipeline as a pilot? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I believe my colleague from ECE spoke a little bit about this just recently in the House. It would certainly come likely to that department to consider this. And there's a lot of change that has happened quite recently to the income assistance policies that make that system more akin to what a guaranteed basic income would be, but not necessarily fully the types of pilots that are happening elsewhere. And there's an awful lot already that's underway, and hopefully those changes make a big difference for those people who are experiencing them and they can go through the process of an evaluation, which I think they might be on deck for through the GRI process, and we'll see how successful they are at this point. Thank you.
Oral questions. Member from Yellowknife Centre.
