Chineese land investment cont...

[oliver990]

I think the bigger issue here is to sift through if sovereign money is purchasing farmland. If individuals or private moneys are ligitimately buying, with intention to live here and create a better life for them selves, then all the power to them. (My great grandpa came over with $6) However, in other jurisidictions the government of China is in fact buying stategic assets (farmland, mines etc..). We need to follow the money trail a bit closer to see if they are circumventing the Canadian ownership laws. The Gov't of Saskatchewan is aware of this concern. hopefully it is not sovereign money buying. However, I totally agree with Parsley in previous posting, the stead flow of $$ from China (private) is real. it is illegal to move $$ out of China, so they are smuggling hard cash into Hong Kong, buy/sell property (part of the real estate bubble there) and pow...laundered into a Hong Kong bank, transfered to relative in Vancouver. In my back door i feel this is the case, about 5000 acres in last 3 years. Get ready for more if world eonomically continues to decay.

[parsley]

As a farm community, we should be making
recommendations to governments.

Agricultural farm workers should have some
qualifications. What are they? What do you want
in a farm worker? What qualifications in workers
would make your bottom line better? Life easier?

Keep in mind that immigrants and farm workers
are not the same. Farm workers enter Canada
temporarily.

What kind of immigrants do you want in your
country? Big question.

We've admitted scores of gangsters and people
who have been jailed, countless terrorists, and
sadly, people who do not want to become
Canadian, but rather, they build depots of their
own culture within our country, isolationists, with
no notion of becoming assimilated. Are you ok
with that??

What factors should be considered for immigrant
approval? Healthy people? Language skills? Work
skills? Education level? Background checks?
Favor some countries? Is bringing their families
with them valid? (grandparents etc.) These are
cultural and economic etc. decisions.

If a candidate has zero English or French skills,
the cost of assimilation has to be considered. Are
we better off to reject ALL people who have no
language skills?

Canadians must ask more questions. It is our
country and we should make the rules. We are
cultural managers. We are borrowing money to
teach, and help and train people who come here.
Lets make sure we choose prudently. And lets
make sure we can afford the support we offer.
Pars

[riders2010]

Good points. I would hope that more people that have facts, ideas about this would post. Or share what is happenning in your area, this is snowballing people are starting to talk about this more and more.

There are multiple aspects to this. It is not simply about instability program, the program is just being used to help facilitate and guarantee the transactions are successful, so one needs to ask why not guarantee canadian farmers first? We need a program for disaster situations and a good crop insurance. Get rid of this payout to people that don't need it bullshit whether they are foreign or not. Take a look at who the middlemen are.

This is not about bashing Wall or Harper. Do they know this is happenning? Did they cause it, do they approve of it? Last I checked we were not china or other dictator states therefore we have the right to know if this is policy or not. If it is, it sure makes gun control etc. sure look trivial and should have been put out prior to the elections.

Are we against trade with asia? HELL NO! But maybe instead of free trade how about focus on fair trade for us. How about recognizing they need us or more correctly our resources a hell of a lot more than we need them, or at minimum equally need each other.

Why not put canadian farmers first. Invest in canadian farmers so that when the inflationary crop prices arrive that cotton has predicted and others, canadians are able to take advantage of it. It is inevitable the world population growing, land is not.

Are we going to remain the greatest country on earth if we sell out all our resources?

Why are other people almost dying to come to canada? If you agree with that then why is our gov saying we need to change this drastically?

I won't even get into the social and cultural issues that are coming with this sell out to the highest dollar mentality.

In my mind our future is being sold out by a few middlemen trying to make a quick easy buck.

Finally Dave I should not have made the comment about you being the joke. You have the right to your opinion, but so do I and everyone else.

[Hopperbin]

What I do not get is this secrecy around these sales. A neighbour selling out does not know the buyer, now since when has anyone selling something never knew who the buyer was and this goes with any industry?
Then you talk to the next new neighbour and he is renting the land from someone he does not know who owns the land, now since when have farmers rented land from whom they do not know?

[newguy]

Lots of Sask farmers have property investments in Mexico,Arizona and Hawaii. Yet it wrong for people outside Canada to invest in property next to them?? Sounds like there is more emotions involved than logic .

[bucket]

There is a difference between owning a vacation home somewhere else and using land purchases to immigrate to Canada to use/abuse the health care and education systems in this country.

When people go to mexico for their vacation, they are visible, spending money. They are insured for health care or accidents etc. No one from canada is trying to immigrate to mexico to my knowledge.

There is a big difference and these investments do need some scrutiny because an epidemic is hard to stop.

[parsley]

You cant sail into Mexico in your jet plane and rip
around the fields with cash in hand and buy the
propert from a farmer or a hotel or a marina.

There are rules.

First, foreigners have to go through a Mexican
agent. Foreigners cannot hold oceanfront or
lakefront property. The property lease comes with
an end date. etc.

Many foreign countries do not have open border
ownership.

Should Canada have stipulations? Should a
Mexican drug cartel be able to buy an entire
municipality, and send in Mexican workers to
'harvest the, er, crops'?

I'm referring to Canadians. I'm asking if foreigners
should enjoy the same rules as citizens enjoy.

Big difference.

And don't even try to HINT at the bigot horseshit.
It simply doesn't work on me.

Every Candian gets to openly discuss these
issues. Pars

[newguy]

We have Chinese buying up land and now buying houses and machinery to farm .Moving families into our community. Our school would not be running if not for immigration of workers. Think Saskatchewan deserves more than 3 or 4 big farms in every ghost town community.

[Hopperbin]

I don't think they are here to **** our country and send food back to China for cheap. They are coming here to make a profit and I have said it before if the Chinese are buying our land at these levels then we are still way under market value. They are also here for the clean air, medical welfare, social programs. Lets not forget China is awash with corruption so they are also running away from things, possibly even the Chinese tax agency. Our country typically does not care how you got your money as long as you bring some. As farmers we are not used to seeing this first hand. We don't like to be in a room full of people speaking another language behind our backs. I just hope we are not entering another age where the guys selling out will suddenly 10 years later find their money worthless. With Rich Chinese Permanent Residents all around them. Of course they will have kids here and they will be Canadian. To us its like an invasion. Suddenly we have Chinese moving in that the most uneducated have more education than we want to know about cause it downgrades our ego. I have learned from past not to underestimate others. Sorry if I offend anyone for talking bad about the ex, I do have some humorous moments like when I say everything is made in China even my wife( well I thought it was funny). Life will go on.

[Hopperbin]

Newguy I have yet to meet a Chinese land investor or see many Chinese in our schools. The ones buying houses are you not refering to the Phillippines moving in?

[Hopperbin]

As an eye openner and probably should start another topic. Looking at a government perspective if the government is wanting to show economic activity. Allowing 1 billion new money into the province to purchase farm land is going to look extremely good on the ballance sheet. Think about it, 1 billion new investment money, retiring farmers spending their money. Gonna have one hell of an effect on ballance sheet.

[cottonpicken]

Maybe we should be thankful they are buying and not
going the anglo saxon route of slaughtering 90
percent of the locals.lol

[hobbyfrmr]

New guy, in my area we already have only about
20 farmers in 2 municipalities. This is happening
whether we like it or not. My four neighbors farm
45000, 25000, 18000, and 20000acre. I do not
begrudge them, they carry a lot of risk that no one
else wanted to in the last 15 years. They also
employ many locals including the flunkies that
would not fit too well in mainstream society!
These guys write cheques and buy the land or
pay high rents. There may be some outside
money funding this, but there has never been a
whisper about it. Some of the big farms and
Hutterite colonies are now traveling 30 miles to
expand their farms. So, I think that the
immigration scenario is real, but we are not
helping ourselves. Hopper has a point, our
children are lazier and not as smart as
immigrants. Immigrant kids know they have to
improve to get out of the less desirable
conditions they were living in. Around here the
teacher gives a kid static, they pull the kid, shut
everything down to deliver and pickup the kid at a
school 15 miles away. Immigrant kids are happy
to goto a school with lights AND heat!

[newguy]

Since all this new interest in Sask land it seems alot more farms that once thought would never have anyone live in now have people living there.It started with alot of Alberta people coming into small rural areas and now some immigrants. My theory of a booming econonomy is when people move in they bring money and money brings people. It is great to see this happening in rual sask now. Sask has alot of catching up to do. So it does not matter where the money comes from into Sask people will follow it. And we do need alot more younger tax payers in this province to ensure we get good health care and so on when the baby boomers are all retired.

[bgmb]

Don't get too bent out of shape boys! Land investment is a fad just like hog barns 15 years ago, k maybe not quite, but you know what I'm getting at.

Good news is most of this investor land will change hands again in the next 10 years. So sit back, relax and farm what you have really really well!