REGINA — Saskatchewan has once again scored highly in an annual survey ranking mining jurisdictions around the world.
The province ranked third out of 68 jurisdictions for Investment Attractiveness in the Annual Survey of Mining Companies, 2025, released last week by the Fraser Institute.
It is an annual survey of mining investors around the world to find out which jurisdictions are attractive or unattractive to mining investment, based on both mineral potential as well as public policy factors including taxation, regulatory uncertainty and availability of skilled labour, among others.
The survey was conducted Aug. 5 to Nov. 26, 2025, and sent to 2,304 individuals, with 256 respondents.
Elmira Aliakbari, director of natural resource studies for the Fraser Institute and a co-author of the report, said that this year they got back "sufficient responses to compare and rank 68 jurisdictions around the world, again based on both government policies and mineral endowment.”
In their Investment Attractiveness Index ranking, Aliakbari noted that “two Canadian provinces, Ontario and Saskatchewan, feature in the top 10 most attractive jurisdictions for mining investment, ranking second and third respectively.”
Saskatchewan scored 89.66 while Ontario was slightly higher at 89.98. The two provinces were both edged out by the U.S. state of Nevada, in first place at 90.87.
As for other provinces, Newfoundland and Labrador had Canada's third-highest Investment Attractiveness ranking, coming in 14th.
For Saskatchewan, its ranking among Canadian provinces had dropped from first to second compared to 2024. Still, its overall score and rank was an improvement from seventh place overall in 2024.
Aliakbari said that Saskatchewan has “historically performed very well in our survey.”
“For this province, it seems that the province has been able to match its strong mineral potential with a solid policy environment.”
According to the survey, Saskatchewan ranked second overall for its mineral potential. There was also a positive view of the province’s policies, ranking eighth out of 68 on the survey’s Policy Perception Index.
But the survey notes respondents expressed increased concerns on a number of issues.
“For the case of Saskatchewan, even though the province performs well on policy factors, we still see that uncertainty concerning protected areas, uncertainty surrounding disputed land claims, and quality of infrastructure are among the top barriers.”
Respondents expressed the most increased concerns over the province’s socioeconomic agreements (up 41 points). But the survey also reported a decrease in concerns over the availability of skilled labour (down seven points), the province’s taxation regime (down six points) and security (down five points).
As for what stood out for Nevada and Ontario in ranking ahead, Aliakbari noted all three jurisdictions at the top performed well on policy.
“And for all those jurisdictions, we see that they have been able, again, to match their strong mineral potential with solid policy environment because they all performed well on both factors.”
While Ontario and Saskatchewan performed best among provinces in overall investment attractiveness and policy factors, several other provinces and territories did not do well on the policy front, said Aliakbari.
“Yukon and Manitoba, for instance, despite ranking 11th and 13th for mineral potential, fall to 47th and 39th respectively when considering policy factors alone. So this means that these jurisdictions have failed to capitalize on their strong mineral potential due to a lack of solid policy environment.”
The survey reported that for Manitoba, respondents had indicated increased concerns over the province’s legal system, taxation regime, and regulatory duplication and inconsistencies.
“Overall, there is significant room for improvement in the policy environment across several Canadian jurisdictions,” Aliakbari said.
As for the methodology used to determine their findings, Aliakbari said in terms of government policies they “consider 15 policy factors that we believe broadly affect the investment decisions in the mining sector.”
“These policy factors include uncertainty surrounding environmental regulations, taxation, trade barriers, legal system, political stability, and so on. So overall, we have 15 policy factors and we create a composite index based on these 15 policy factors.”
They also create another index which “solely looks at the impact of pure mineral potential on attitudes towards basically mining investment. And we then combine these two indices to create our overall investment attractiveness because we believe that, again, both factors affect investment decisions.”
Similar to past years, she said, they are seeing that investors “continue to cite policy uncertainty as a major barrier to investment in Canadian jurisdictions.”
Uncertainty over protected areas and disputed land claims is a top concern for almost all Canadian jurisdictions, she said. Other areas of concern include uncertainty surrounding environmental regulations, as well as regulatory duplication and inconsistency.
“For example, 75 per cent of respondents for New Brunswick and 72 per cent for BC indicated that uncertainty concerning protected areas was a deterrent to investment compared to only 11 per cent for Utah and 21 per cent for Nevada. So overall, the message is clear. Policy uncertainty in some areas is a key deterrent to investment in many Canadian jurisdictions.”
As for how governments should approach the findings of this survey, Aliakbari said this is meant to help governments across Canada identify the policy barriers in their jurisdictions.
“Our survey can be like a report card for governments across the country to identify the issues. And we are urging governments across Canada to look into our survey and identify the policy barriers in their jurisdictions and address them.”
