Devolution took effect on April 1, 2014. It is significant. Yukon devolution was a few years before, and now we have Northwest Territories devolution. Of course, the next step will be, when can we have devolution for Nunavut?
It's taken place. It's pretty significant. It's very important in terms of the political and economic development for people in the territory. It's certainly proven to be the case in the Yukon that when a government is close to its people and can make decisions, it leads to a lot more successful results, particularly with respect to evolution.
What we transferred in terms of devolution on April 1 was largely management and authority over lands and resources. There are a lot of provincial-like responsibilities relating to water and land licensing that used to be managed down here in our department, and that's now done up in the Northwest Territories.
As a result of that, there will be certain authorities that the Government of the Northwest Territories will have with respect to collecting resource revenues, and it will have greater authority over the decisions on how to make use of that. That allows it to get the best net fiscal benefit out of resource development and look to investments for the future. It's additional resources, and it will have an impact on the transfer payment that's made by the federal government, so NWT will have an additional amount to what it's getting in the transfer payments.
Some people like to say that it is about nation building and about continuing our nation building.
There is a lot of work that was done together with aboriginal groups in the territories. There are a number of aboriginal parties there that have agreed with the government on how to manage resource revenue sharing. It was agreed that 25% of resource revenue sharing will be given to aboriginal groups, and that was in the context of devolution.
They're hoping, and we all hope, that the ultimate impact of devolution will be something in the order of about $20 million in spinoff benefits and that there will be an opportunity for even more development in the future.
We've retained responsibility in the federal government for certain environmental remediation. Federal contaminated sites that were identified before devolution will remain the responsibility of the federal government, and there will still be some. Ones that become known and apparent after devolution will be the responsibility of the Government of the Northwest Territories.
Those are a few of the impacts. In some respects it sounds as though we've transferred licensing over water and land, but in fact it was significant and was certainly celebrated in the Northwest Territories.