Alec Salloum
Regina Leader-Post
Bill Prybylski is worried that current rules around foreign investors purchasing Saskatchewan farmland will price local producers out of the market.
“That’s our biggest concern,” said Prybylski, president of the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan (APAS), in an interview on Friday.
“We’re having to compete against that to buy land. So we have a young producer that’s wanting to expand his operation who just can’t because every time a piece of land comes up for sale, it’s being bought up by who knows?”
On Nov. 12, Prybylski sent a letter to Minister of Agriculture Daryl Harrison that identifies what APAS calls systemic challenges to farmland ownership in Saskatchewan and outlines how it would like to see the province address the issue.
The letter states that “speculative (both domestic and foreign) investors” are driving up land prices beyond the production return value, thus pricing many local farmers out of the market. It also touches on the suspicion of “indirect forms of foreign ownership, including corporate structures and financial instruments” that distort provincial market dynamics, a concern voiced by APAS and the producers it represents.
The letter comes on the heels of recent criticism by Saskatchewan NDP MLA Trent Wotherspoon over a perceived lack of “teeth” regarding the powers of the Farm Land Security Board (FLSB).
In a back-and-forth debate during question period last week, the Opposition MLA accused the Sask. Party of failing to properly regulate sales of farmland, leaving the door open for organized crime and the Chinese state to profit from Saskatchewan land ownership.
Following the spat, Harrison sent a letter to Wotherspoon that called for him to prove the accusations. Wotherspoon then penned his own letter to Harrison calling for increased FLSB resources and other actions to strengthen the review process for farmland sales.
“They don’t have the resources and teeth that they deserve. We know there’s mile-wide loopholes,” Wotherspoon said on Nov. 12 during question period at the Saskatchewan legislature.
In response, Harrison said he has struck a committee with APAS to address the issue and noted that FLSB now requires “statutory declarations” for all purchases of Saskatchewan farmland, which must include proof of residency.
In the past, these declarations were reserved for “higher risk farm land purchasers to assess compliance with foreign ownership requirements,” explained deputy provincial auditor Jason Shaw during an Oct. 16 public accounts meeting.
Changes don’t go far enough: APAS
The statutory declaration requirement came after a 2024 report from provincial auditor Tara Clemett outlining issues within the FLSB system of verifying land purchases.
An audit found that between 2020 and 2024, there were five instances where farmland was found to be inappropriately purchased by foreign entities and subsequently ordered to be resold. But with some 40,000 such transactions occurring each year, the report said “there may be more instances.”
Prybylski still sees the possibility for exploitation of the current system, even after the Ministry of Agriculture announced Thursday that the FLSB has implemented all recommendations from the auditor.
“When it gets to be numbered companies that are making that acquisition, who actually owns those numbered companies?” he mused, while at the same time acknowledging that local farmers could also be purchasing land under numbered companies.
He voiced further concern over the timelines for investigations into land purchases and the ability of the FLSB to compel purchasers to sell land acquired in contravention of provincial laws.
As Prybylski tours around RMs in Saskatchewan, he says the issue of foreign ownership keeps coming up.
“Nobody seems to know who the actual owner of the land is and how it’s being financed,” he said.
