REGINA — The opposition New Democrats were busy lambasting the Saskatchewan Party government this week over the release of Volume 1 of the 2026 Provincial Auditor’s report.
In particular, the NDP took aim at Provincial Auditor Tara Clemett’s conclusions on last year’s wildfire response. At a news conference at the legislature Tuesday, the NDP’s Brent Blakley particularly blasted the government for not having budgeted enough for wildfire response.
“This is straight from the auditor's report,” Blakley said. “They weren't properly funding the reality on the ground, and people lost their homes and were lucky someone wasn't killed. There was little planning done, no work was done to determine the optimal level of firefighters and aircraft that were needed. Bluntly, they were missing in action. We need a proactive plan, not an insufficient reactive response.”
He said this was made clear by the “scathing MNP report reviewing this disastrous report two weeks ago, and backed up today and it's time for some accountability.”
Blakley repeated his call for Justice Minister Tim McLeod to be fired and removed from cabinet, even though McLeod is no longer in the public safety portfolio.
“This was a minister who failed to do his job from top to bottom,” Blakley said.
Blakley also raised alarms about what the auditor’s report had to say about group homes where care is provided to children.
He said 71 per cent have ”not had a detailed review completed within the last five years. One home was last reviewed 20 years ago. The auditor has advised a series of actions that must be taken starting with timely reviews. These are children, their care is being entrusted to the province. If the province can't even take care of them, what does that say about their priorities?”
Also at the news conference was health critic Meara Conway, who took aim at the government over the Provincial Auditor’s findings on the province’s reliance on travel nurses.
“The auditor found this government was forced to spend nearly $100 million on travel nurses in the 2023-24 year because of the mess that they have caused," said Conway.
"Now we did see a slight decrease in reliance on travel nurses to the tune of $20 million to the next year. However, that was more than swallowed up by a corresponding reliance on overtime. The decrease on travel nurses was $20 million. The increase to overtime was $105 million. This is an utter mess.”
Conway also pointed to report findings that many new facilities, she said, were being built without a plan to staff them.
“There were poor hiring practices too, a lack of criminal record checks — either cultural sensitivity training and basic safety training wasn't happening, or it wasn't being tracked. In one case, there was a nurse that was fired for having lied about her work history and she was then rehired, and the auditor could not figure out how this happened or why.”
“Let's be clear this is a mess of the Sask. Party's making. They have failed to recruit and retain workers. They've imposed a culture of fear on those working to hold a crumbling system together.”
Conway also pointed to concerns the Provincial Auditor raised around environmental assessments, pointing to “no properly defined timeline for performing these assessments of the six projects she looked at.”
“Some of them took up to six and a half years to complete these assessments. There is inconsistency in terms of the experts and personnel that were brought in. Public notices that are supposed to be put out in three businesses sometimes took up to six months. Let's be clear: this is bad for projects, the environment, for jobs and for our economy.”
On Wednesday, the NDP stepped up its attacks over the Provincial Auditor’s report, as they focused again on the wildfire response.
At a media availability in Saskatoon, associate critic for community safety Hugh Gordon was joined on a Zoom call by Denare Beach resident Rhonda Werbicki, who lost her home in the 2025 wildfires. Both took aim again at McLeod over the response.
“This was such a massive failure," Gordon said in a statement.
"Scott Moe should fire the Minister at the centre of this epic failure, Tim McLeod. Why does he still have a seat at the cabinet table and earn a Minister’s paycheque when people in the North lost so much? … It’s time to bring willing partners to the table and to make sure Tim McLeod is never allowed anywhere near emergency response again.“
Moe responds
In a scrim reporters Wednesday afternoon at the Legislature, Premier Moe dismissed the calls to remove McLeod.
"Listen, the opposition is going to do what they do," Moe said. He also pointed to the government's commitment to respond to the 11 recommendations in the MNP report.
"We've answered the MNP report, and I think those answers very strongly address many of the concerns that were brought forward by the auditor with respect to the SPSA. The fact that we need to do better in organizing, the SPSA needs to do better in organizing for each and every fire season. They need to do better when it comes to communicating and working shoulder to shoulder with communities in keeping our homes safe."
Moe acknowledged that last year was "a tragic fire season with over 500 wildfires. We lost over 200 homes. That, I think, speaks to the fact that the SPSA does need to regroup and ensure that they are doing better with their organization in going into fire seasons and with the communication and how they're working locally with communities."
Moe also pointed to the province "working alongside communities and supporting the FireSmart program to ensure that communities are prepared long before a fire is ever on their doorstep."
"We saw the effectiveness of that type of preparedness in the case of Wadin Bay, who had FireSmart in their community, and I think if we are able to do that in community after community, the initiative would be led by the local community, supported by the government of Saskatchewan and the SPSA, we'll be in a much stronger position moving forward than for sure we were last year, or even this year."
