Why did the federal government control Saskatchewan’s natural resources after 1905?

When Saskatchewan entered the Canadian confederation in 1905, it was granted the status of a province equal to others, with one notable exception: the federal government retained control of its natural resources.

The federal government maintained this authority as a condition of the province's creation under the Saskatchewan Act. In exchange for withholding these resource rights, the federal government provided the province with a subsidy intended to compensate for the revenues that the resources might have otherwise yielded. This arrangement, which also applied to the neighboring province of Alberta, remained in effect until 1930, when the control of natural resources was finally assigned to the province.1