Provincial Governance

This ten year agreement, jointly funded by the provincial and federal governments, allowed the province to create a Fur Advisory Committee that would advise the government on matters of conservation on trapping above the fifty-third parallel, which was divided into five ‘fur blocks.’ These regions were allotted to five-member trappers councils who were responsible for overseeing the conservation endeavors. Trapping was restricted to those who had lived in the north for at least a year (to shut out seasonal trappers from the south) and who had no other major source of income outside of trapping.

The Union of Saskatchewan Indians was formed in 1946 as a provincial Aboriginal political organization. It was created with assistance by Saskatchewan Premier T.C Douglas. John Tootoosis was the first president of this group, which was the amalgamation of three previously existing groups: the Protective Association for Indians and their Treaties, the Saskatchewan Indian Association, and the Saskatchewan section of the North American Indian Brotherhood. Aboriginal members of the union had voting privileges, but persons of any race were eligible for non-voting honorary membership. The choice of John Tootoosis as president was hoped to bring together First Nations people from the north (treaty 6) and the south (treaty 4) into one united organization.----------Premier T. C. Douglas began to take a more direct role in Indigenous affairs after July 1945, when members of the Carry-the-Kettle Reserve (Dan Kennedy's reserve) conferred on him the honorary title of Chief Weagasha (Red Eagle). The work of T.C. Douglas and his legal advisor Morris Shumiatcher seems to have irritated some bureaucrats in the federal government, who viewed this active involvement with First Nations organizations as provincial meddling in an area of exclusively federal jurisdiction. It was also known that Douglas wished to have federal services to Indians transfered to provincial governments.

In an attempt to regulate fisheries and establish a product of uniform quality, the CCF government created the Saskatchewan Fish Products board to operate filleting plants in the province, and later in the same year created the Saskatchewan Fish Marketing Board. Several shipments of fish had been refused at the American border, due to the presence of bacteria found in Saskatchewan lake fish, prompting the government to increase quality inspection and establish quality standards. The SFMB applied many of the same policies that the SFMS did to furs: licenses for local fishers and regulation of fish prices were central to their goals. In 1946, the board was reorganized with the creation of the Saskatchewan Lake and Forest Products Corporation, which included three divisions: fish, timber, and the Box Corporation. The goal of the board was to encourage participation in the fish industry, especially by Indigenous peoples, and to create a government monopoly over the sale and trade of fish. The board also established six stores throughout Northern Saskatchewan as a Crown corporation in order to regulate the purchase and sales of goods in the fishing industry. The board also effectively served as a social services board until it was eliminated in 1949 after years of deficit.                      

After the failure of the Saskatchewan Fish Market Board to stabilize fishing industries, it was reorganized in 1949 to create the Saskatchewan Fish Marketing Service. Fisheries were then structured by region, which were administered by one central administration. An interview with Berry Richards reveals that one purpose of the Fish Marketing Service was to give Indigenous fishermen a better price than paid by private fishing companies. However, this was not the case as many Indigenous fishermen reported that what they received from the Government was substantially less that what they received from private contractors. They were also unable to negotiate better prices for their catch, as they had with private buyers, because the Fish Marketing Service came from a top-down standardized approach which did not allow for negotiation. 

In attempt to regulate fur trading and trapping enterprises, the CCF government created the Saskatchewan Fur Marketing Services, a crown corporation commission service for trappers. The SFMS regulated prices and quotas on specific species to encourage conservation. Beaver and muskrat pelts had to be sold through this service, though other types of pelts could still be sold to private enterprises. The SFMS also took 10% of the revenue from the sale of pelts. The Department assured that the positions of First Nations and Métis trappers would be taken into consideration regarding the new regulations. Despite these assurances, there was organized opposition to this service, as evidenced by the Lac La Ronge petition of 1949, where 137 members of the area demanded that their furs not be sold by socialist bodies, such as the Marketing service.

In 1942-1943 the Churchill River Power Company constructed a storage dam at Whitesand Rapids on Reindeer Lake to stabilize the water supply for the Island Falls dam. The Peter Ballantyne Band is upstream from the Whitesands Dam at Southend Reindeer Lake. Six hundred acres of shoreline part of their reserve lands was flooded by the operation of the dam.