Today, the Chamber presented its latest research report to a City Council Committee aimed at strengthening municipal service audit at the City of Saskatoon. Through several budget and election cycles, the Chamber has identified an opportunity to strengthen Saskatoon’s municipal service audit function to ensure that Council has timely, decision-useful information for budget deliberations, and to feed into the City’s continuous improvement efforts already underway.

The Chamber researched the leading practices of comparable cities to benchmark the strength of Saskatoon’s municipal service audit function. Across all the areas we benchmarked, we rank low or last among peers in service audit capacity.

Saskatoon has taken some positive first steps. An Office of the City Auditor exists. We built the launchpad. We just haven't launched the rocket.

Our Office of City Auditor operates with two full-time staff and an annual budget of roughly $450,000 — $1.42 per resident. The peer average is more than $2.30. Calgary operates with 19 staff. Edmonton, 17. Even Hamilton, a smaller city, fields eight.

The resourcing gap compounds a governance problem. The City Auditor currently reports administratively to the Chief Financial Officer and presents findings through the Standing Policy Committee on Finance. There are no independent public members with audit or risk expertise on that committee. In peer cities like Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, and Toronto, dedicated audit committees meet quarterly and include citizen members with accounting or governance expertise. Every major Canadian city we benchmarked has made room for experts. Saskatoon has not.

The consequences show up in the public record – where service audit reporting has been inconsistent, delayed or delivered when it is not decision-useful to Council.

Perhaps the most telling data point involves our whistleblower system. Between April 2021 and December 2022, Saskatoon received 10 complaints. In all of 2023 and 2024 combined — just three.

That isn't a sign things are going well. It likely reflects awareness gaps, scope limitations, and a lack of confidence in anonymity. A 2022 roadmap to improve Saskatoon's whistleblower program has been repeatedly delayed and now extends to 2026–2027. The policies and communication strategies used by peer cities already exist. We do not have to invent this. We just need to decide to do it.

The Chamber's eight recommendations are practical and grounded in proven practice. We are asking City Council to: establish a dedicated Audit Committee with independent public members; commit to a mid-range operating budget with four to five full-time staff; set KPIs and performance standards for the Office itself; set fixed annual review and reporting deadlines; launch a structured value-for-money audit program targeting high-cost, high-stakes areas like transit reliability, capital project delivery, procurement, winter road maintenance, and housing; and revive the whistleblower program with quarterly public reporting on outcomes.

Over a dozen major Canadian cities have already adopted a robust Auditor General model – and that is the model we believe Saskatoon should pursue. We hope our report’s recommendations provide a roadmap for Council and Administration to propel Saskatoon as a leader in this space.

Download the report here.