Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Unlike my colleagues, I will not be putting aside my statement today, and I want to talk about the Heritage Fund. I want to speak to the report that I tabled yesterday from the Action Canada Fellows, titled “A Question of Future Prosperity, Developing a Heritage Fund in the Northwest Territories.” That report had six recommendations and I’d like to comment briefly on each one of them.
The first one is to establish clear fund objectives and allocate more than 5 percent of annual resource royalties to the Heritage Fund. We’ve heard from the Finance Minister earlier today that the government is willing to put 25 percent into the Heritage Fund, and that’s wonderful, but I don’t believe it’s in the current budget year, and that’s what, I believe, we’re asking for.
Legislation is also required to state exactly how much money we’re putting into the Heritage Fund, and I didn’t hear the Minister state that legislation changes would be upcoming.
The second recommendation is to set up a statutory framework for deposit and withdrawal rules. Again, this needs to be in legislation. We need to know how much money we are depositing on a regular basis, how much money we are withdrawing on a regular basis. Some of that is covered in our current act, but not in as much detail as it should be.
The third recommendation: Appoint a supervisory council to manage the Heritage Fund. This one is a big one. Currently, the fund is under the management of the Financial Management Board, and in my mind that’s like having the fox guard the henhouse. We need to have an independent and arm’s-length supervisory council which will have independent oversight of the Heritage Fund. Sure, we can have government representatives on that council, but we need to have the public involved and it needs to be reporting directly to the Minister of Finance or the Premier. It should not be reporting to the Financial Management Board.
Number four, develop a robust investment mandate. This one is maybe a little bit more difficult, but we need to know how our funds are being invested. There should be an independent investment manager, and I’m not saying that that’s missing, but it’s not stated, and we need to also have that stated in legislation.
Number five, establish strong fund governance including transparency mechanism, and we don’t have that. It goes back to the third recommendation about the FMB managing the fund itself. There needs to be regular reports, and it has to be reported to the Assembly, and it also has to be reported to the public.
I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted
Currently, I don’t believe we have anything which states that there will be any kind of an annual reporting mechanism, and that also needs to be in legislation.
The last one is to continue citizen engagement to ensure the public support and the long-term viability and success of the Heritage Fund. It’s very important that the public understands and supports what we’re trying to do with the Heritage Fund, that we’re trying to save for the future, that we’re trying to ensure that we have revenues in the future when our resource revenues are gone. The fund belongs to the residents of the NWT, and with them involved that will ensure that the objectives that have been set in place will actually be maintained.
I will have some questions for the Minister of Finance later on.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
