The first provincial audit was released for 2025, showing off some of the latest items that the Provincial Auditor of Saskatchewan, Tara Clemett, picked up. That ranged from education, justice, health, and other areas that the province oversees.
Clemett noted one discrepancy in funding for the number of beds available at some opioid addiction treatment centers.
"For example, we found two ministry-funded transition houses in different areas of Saskatchewan with equal bed numbers and funding differed by over $200,000 in 2024-25."
Those two homes are located in Regina and Swift Current. The province focused on opioid services in their report and gave the following recommendations:
- Clearly communicate the opioid addiction treatment services available in the province
- Analyze the supply and demand for opioid addiction treatment services across the province
- Implement standardized approaches (e.g., work standards, IT system) for its opioid addiction treatment services
- Offer OAT medication to clients with opioid use disorder during detox services
- Complete opioid withdrawal assessments before prescribing OAT medication and provide timely treatment to clients receiving outpatient opioid addiction treatment services
- Consistently complete discharge/transfer plans for clients receiving inpatient opioid addiction treatment services
- Analyze and report on key performance information related to delivering opioid addiction treatment services
When talking about education, the province focused on making sure that independent schools were up to snuff, giving the following pieces of advice:
- Analyze and report on independent school student achievement
- Complete school risk assessments
- Use centrally tracked risk ratings to determine necessary school inspections
- Centrally compile identified non-compliance for all independent schools
Clemmet spoke about education and how some independent schools may not be meeting the required quality needed.
"The ministry doesn't look at credit attainment or graduation rates for students in independent schools. We found that 14 religously-based registered schools are not required to employ certified teachers."
Justice focused on the transition houses touched on in the health section and how the province could help see those grow.
- Make information about its licensing and funding process more accessible for potential new transition house operators
- Rationalize its funding provided to each transition and second-stage house
- Periodically inspect transition houses
- Verify periodic criminal record checks for staff working in transition and second-stage houses
- Determine key performance information needed from transition houses
- Analyze and report key information obtained from transition and second-stage houses to determine strategies to address performance shortfalls
Looking at trade, the audit wanted the province to make sure its trade offices with other countries and provinces were working in tip-top shape.
- Establish targets for key performance indicators to track progress and monitor success of trade offices
- Measure satisfaction of parties having worked with trade offices
- Document how it evaluates trade offices’ key performance indicators to facilitate consistent measurement
- Enhance its public reporting of trade office performance
The annual audit covered 57 different agencies with fiscal year-ends between July and December 2024. As well audits were conducted of 27 school divisions and 16 pension and employee benefit plans.