REGINA — In the wake of some high-profile security incidents at Saskatchewan hospitals, security is being beefed up at hospitals in the province.
The Saskatchewan Health Authority has confirmed in an emailed statement that, in order to “enhance hospital safety and security,” the SHA will install metal detectors in urban emergency departments across both Regina and Saskatoon.
“This deployment of metal detectors to urban emergency departments follows a successful metal detection pilot at the joint emergency department entrance at Royal University Hospital and Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital in Saskatoon,” the SHA confirmed in a statement. They added that the metal detectors were ordered in December 2025 as part of ongoing efforts to enhance hospital safety and security.
The SHA added that it will be “sharing additional information on this and additional actions being advanced in collaboration with the Ministry of Health to strengthen safety and security in hospitals in the coming days.”
There is also word that Minister of Health Jeremy Cockrill and SHA CEO Andrew Will have scheduled a news conference for Thursday in Saskatoon for a further update on hospital safety and security.
The news comes after some high-profile recent incidents at hospitals in the province, the most recent notable one being the death of Trevor Dubois following an altercation with security at Royal University Hospital. That prompted calls from the Saskatoon Tribal Council for transparency in the investigation.
Saskatchewan NDP Deputy Leader Vicki Mowat called for safety and security to be addressed in the wake of the incident.
“Safety and security has become a major issue at hospitals — especially here in Saskatoon — and we need emergency action before someone else gets hurt,” Mowat said in a statement Jan. 11.
Last week, a letter was sent to the SHA signed by more than 200 frontline health-care staff at St. Paul’s Hospital and shared on social media by NDP Health critic Meara Conway. On Facebook, Conway said the letter “details nearly four dozen violent incidents and safety concerns.”
“It shows that chaos in ERs is a daily reality and confirms that, despite repeated warnings, little to no action has been taken by the government as conditions have continued to worsen. This letter comes on the heels of the death of Trevor Dubois, which is a tragedy. For patients and the public, incidents like this shatter the perception that hospitals are a place of safety and healing.”
The issue of metal detectors also came to the fore last fall, when the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses posted about an incident in late November at St. Paul’s Hospital in Saskatoon in which a patient brought a sawed-off shotgun into the emergency room along with at least three knives.
SUN posted on Facebook that the sawed-off shotgun was found by a housekeeper who notified one of the RNs, and that Saskatoon police were contacted for assistance.
Health critic Conway raised the issue at the Legislature, and in her scrum with reporters noted that a metal detector had been purchased for St. Paul’s Hospital but was instead shipped to another facility.
“Staff are quite upset about that, because they were promised to have something like that put in place because this is something that is not a new incident.”
During question period in December, Health Minister Cockrill said there was a pilot project to add an artificial intelligence-assisted system at Royal University Hospital to detect weapons, and that officials were evaluating its success and looking at rolling it out to more health-care facilities.
