NWT’s resource revenues drop to less than zero dollars

Territorial data shows the annual revenue northern governments generate from mining, oil and gas has all but disappeared.

When devolution happened in 2014, the NWT government promised two big benefits: decisions made in the North instead of Ottawa, and a “significant source of new revenue” from resources.

The GNWT now keeps 37.5 percent of the money companies pay to develop resources on public land in the territory, with 12.5 percent going to Indigenous governments and the rest to Canada. Before devolution, the federal government kept all of it.

In the years after devolution, resource revenues topped out at around $60 million each year, giving the GNWT more than $20 million and guaranteeing Indigenous governments at least $7 million.

The devolution agreement even included an annual resource revenue cap of $100 million that the GNWT could keep, based on the expectation that this revenue source “will grow as the territory grows” and the NWT shouldn’t rake in an unreasonably large sum while still relying on federal transfer payments.

But it’s now hard to imagine circumstances in which resource revenues will reach $100 million a year. Those revenues dropped like a stone in the 2023-24 financial year and, because of accounting adjustments, actually came out below zero in 2024-25.

With diamond mines shedding staff and abandoning their future plans as a depressed market bites, and no industry primed to immediately pick up the slack, the forecast in 2025-26 and 2026-27 is for the GNWT to get less than $1 million each year.

These figures came to light in the legislature earlier this month as regular MLAs scrutinized the territory’s draft 2026-27 budget.

In the grander scheme of a budget that contains spending worth $2.724 billion, a vanishing $60 million in resource revenues could be considered a blip.

But at the same time, the GNWT is battling cost increases – like a vast jump in its air ambulance contract – that larger resource revenues would help to offset.

Meanwhile, those revenues are also supposed to power the NWT Heritage Fund.

The point of a heritage fund is long-term investment. Alberta, which has far larger revenues from non-renewables, has a heritage fund worth tens of billions. The NWT’s fund is currently worth tens of millions.

The fund “transforms non-renewable resource revenues into a sustainable, income-generating financial asset, securing a perpetual source of revenue for the future,” the GNWT has said in the past.

But with resource revenues now so low, virtually no cash is being invested in the heritage fund. Julian Morse, the Frame Lake MLA, described contributions to the fund as having “fallen off a cliff” as MLAs reviewed this line item in the 2026-27 budget.

“It is difficult watching those resource revenues decline and even more difficult watching it divvied up and half of it sent to the feds – and by the time we’re done with it, there’s not very much left,” said Morse.

For its first few years, the heritage fund was “seeded” with annual contributions of $250,000. Then, once devolution kicked in, those contributions rocketed to more than $5 million a year.

Now, the 2026-27 payment into the fund is forecast to be even lower than one of the initial seed payments, at $187,000.

Finance minister Caroline Wawzonek pointed out the obvious – that the NWT’s contributions to this kind of fund are “not really on the scale of what, obviously, Alberta has the opportunities to bring in.”

Only if “our mineral resource fortunes turn around in the next little while,” she said, would it be worth reviewing how contributions are made and the fund managed.

As of March 31, 2025, the fund’s net value stood at $52.5 million according to its latest annual report. In 2024-25, the fund delivered a return of 7.6 percent.

“Resource revenues are forecasted to remain low due to global economic uncertainty and reduction in diamond mining activity,” the annual report stated.

“As a result, future contributions to the fund are expected to be modest, with growth primarily driven by disciplined portfolio management.”