Several Saskatchewan rural municipalities say they want the land they transferred to the federal community pasture program years ago returned.
They are willing to go to court to see that agreements dating back to the 1930s are honoured, said delegates at last week’s Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities annual convention.
The municipalities of Mount Hope, Reno and Heart’s Hill all said that past councils agreed to transfer the land on the condition that it be operated as a government pasture or be returned.
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They said the land should come back to them now that Ottawa has decided to get out of the community pasture business.
They want the issue addressed by Aug. 31 or they will ask SARM to help launch a class action lawsuit against the province for breach of agreement. A resolution calling for such action was passed.
Fred Baran, a councillor in the RM of Dundurn, said his municipality is in the same position.
“We have asked the agricultural minister to address this situation and have been ignored,” he told the convention during the resolution session.
He again raised the issue at the bear pit session with premier Brad Wall and cabinet ministers.
“Your ministry of agriculture, in an effort to offload these pastures, has created an expensive, cumbersome and frustrating process that deals only with the pasture patrons,” he told Wall.
Baran said the agriculture ministry has ignored the requests from affected RMs. He quoted from the minutes of the Land Utilization Board of Dec. 12, 1939, noting that when an RM transfers title to the board “for a specific purpose and that purpose no longer exists, the rural municipality be offered a lease on these lands or on their request the title be transferred back to them.”
Agriculture minister Lyle Stewart said the issue is “thorny” and lawyers have advised that the land reverts to the province.
“Our legal counsel has reviewed the minutes of the Land Utilization Board from 1936 to 1963 and they found no contractual agreements between the land utilization board and RMs for the land to be reverted back to RMs,” he said.
However, he said the government would abide by those claims if the RMs can provide valid proof of a claim.
A delegate from the RM of Mount Hope said it and Prairie Rose are jointly involved in a former PFRA pasture.
Only one current patron from Prairie Rose is interested in leasing the pasture, while seven from Mount Hope are interested.
Most of the patrons say they can’t afford the lease rates, he said.
Meanwhile, the Manitoba government has provided three years of transitional funding to the Association of Manitoba Community Pastures to help the non-profit organization manage the 24 pastures under transition in that province.
The $1 million will help patrons acquire equipment and facilities needed to operate pastures. The province and 11 municipalities own most of the land in the Manitoba pastures.
The AMCP, once incorporated, will operate the land on a cost-recovery basis.
