The Saskatchewan government plans to officially dump a 32-year-old law that granted it powers to expropriate private potash assets.
Premier Brad Wall’s government, which took office from the previous NDP administration last month, on Monday introduced legislation to repeal the provincial Potash Development Act.
The repeal will take away the government’s ability to nationalize the potash industry, the government said. “These powers are antiquated, inappropriate and no longer necessary — so we’re getting rid of them,” Wall said in a release Monday.
The new government explained that the previous act was introduced in 1975 “as part of the Blakeney government’s strategy to nationalize the potash industry.”
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NDP resource critic Len Taylor retorted in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix on Tuesday that the legislation introduced by Allan Blakeney’s NDP government at the time was meant to ensure “orderly development” in Saskatchewan’s potash industry and never had to be used. Taylor wondered aloud why the Saskatchewan Party government would put a priority on repealing a dormant law.
The Blakeney government opted to buy rather than expropriate potash assets, starting in late 1975, and used those assets to set up Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan as a Crown corporation. Grant Devine’s Progressive Conservative government later privatized PotashCorp, which had its IPO as a publicly traded company in 1989.
