One of the most concerning finds from Volume Two of the 2025 Provincial Auditor’s Report was the lack of inspections conducted at special care homes in Saskatchewan.
Provincial Auditor Tara Clemett presented her report from Regina Tuesday morning. She says her team found that as of July, only 130 out of 161 special-care homes had been inspected since December 2021.
“They envisioned that they would inspect all special care homes within three years. It has now been closer to four, and there are 30 care homes that they still haven’t got to. It’s the fact that they’re not using a risk-based approach.”
A risk-based approach would triage inspections based on critical complaints and reporting issues, not proximity.
“And they need to go back. When they find noncompliance issues, right now they’re allowing those special care homes to self-report and say, ‘we’ve fixed everything that you’ve asked us to.’ We expect the minister should go back and confirm that is the case.”
The team also found that in 2023-24, nearly 35 per cent of long-term care residents were given antipsychotic drugs without a diagnosis, chemically restraining them.
“We found the ministry did not inspect homes with very high rates; 63 per cent and 59 per cent respectively, of residents potentially receiving antipsychotic drugs inappropriately until over three years after the inspection program began.”
She says completed inspections at these homes did lead to identifying critical risks related to chemical restraints. In her report, she provided six recommendations, including undertaking unannounced inspections, as it gives a more accurate picture of the state of the facilities.
Inside the education portfolio, a looming concern that the province won’t reach its goal of 46,000 total licensed child care spaces by March 31, 2026, has prompted the provincial auditor to make four recommendations to the Ministry of Education.
Her recommendations included the development of a sustainable funding model for the provision of child care, the tracking of child care spaces by age group for home-based providers, the analysis of key data to understand the accessibility of child care in the province, and that this information be reported to the federal government annually.
“The ministry also doesn’t track the extent of approved childcare spaces being utilized. We found 694 instances where spaces were underutilized, suggesting some spaces may have been approved in areas with low demand or with insufficient qualified educators available.”
She says determining where waitlists are growing long will also give a better idea of where to funnel resources. The province currently has 41,163 child care spaces, including 7,635 still under development. Meanwhile, CUPE President Kent Peterson says, “The government is inflating numbers while families are stuck in child care deserts. The Auditor General’s report confirms the shocking reality that the Government of Saskatchewan doesn’t even track how many approved child care spaces are actually being used and has no clue if there are enough workers to staff them.” CUPE Saskatchewan is calling for a fully public and non-profit child care system, and it urges the provincial government to eliminate the for-profit child care from its expansion plans and invest in a system that is affordable, accessible, and accountable.
On a different topic, the audit team also found that only 35 per cent of correctional workers agreed there is adequate awareness and knowledge of psychological health issues, and sick leave hours per officer have jumped from 104 in 2023-34 to 114 in 2024-25. To protect the wellbeing of correctional facility workers, Clemett recommended that better guidance be provided on when to deploy Critical Incident Stress Management teams at correctional facilities, as well as report on CISM effectiveness. The Ministry also needs to enhance the staff surveys it uses to evaluate the mental health supports it provides to correctional workers.
She also suggested five measures that should be taken when it comes to government IT projects. Among them, Clemett determined that the Ministry of SaskBuilds and Procurement did not receive consistent progress reports from clients for two of four projects tested, even though both projects were running late and overbudget, so a recommendation was put forth to ensure timely submission of monthly project progress reports for IT governance bodies and follow up when not received from clients.
