Early Learning

The Provincial Auditor says the Ministry of Education needs to make a number of improvements to the Early Learning Intensive Support Program in order to know whether the Program sufficiently supports the children.

The Ministry of Education commits about a third of its $13 million in annual federal funding for early years towards addressing the inclusivity of preschool-aged children experiencing disabilities. The Ministry addresses inclusivity through various pilot programs, of which the Early Learning Intensive Support Program is one. Since 2018, the Ministry has made this Program available in existing prekindergarten programs within selected school divisions.

The Auditor says the ministry needs to collect key data for determining whether children in the Program receive sufficient supports to enable them to learn and develop. And, regularly collect information about school divisions’ actions to address the challenges identified in reviews of whether the Program was operating as expected.

Since 2014, the Saskatchewan education sector established an early learning goal associated with kindergarten students’ readiness to learn. Provincial Auditor Judy Ferguson says, in 2018-19, 79 percent of kindergarten students in our publicly funded schools were assessed as at an appropriate level of development; the attainment of self-declared First Nations, Métis, and Inuit kindergarten was significantly lower at 56 percent. Both are below the provincial goal of 90 percent of students exiting kindergarten being ready for learning in the primary grades.

Saskatoon School Division No. 13 is one of three divisions with more than 1,500 kindergarten students each year. The percentage of the readiness of its kindergarten students to learn is similar to the provincial average. Ferguson says Saskatoon Public needs to do more to monitor its success in readying students for learning in the primary grades when exiting kindergarten.

Saskatoon Public needs written expectations about the minimum frequency of assessing kindergarten students using standard assessment tools in all key areas of learning and development; and, where teachers use alternate assessment tools, confirm their suitability.

Ferguson says kindergarten teachers did not always assess students at least twice a year using standard assessment or suitable tools. In addition, the Division could not explain why some kindergarten students did not participate in required reassessments.

The Auditor says Saskatoon Public teachers did not consistently use key instructional practices as expected. For example, they did not always include students identified as having problems in learning in their Sprint cycles.

Patient Safety

The Provincial Auditor is concerned about Improving patient safety through critical incident reporting. In her latest report Judy Ferguson says a critical incident is a serious adverse health event that did, or could have, resulted in serious harm or death of a patient. She says these incidents can cause emotional strain and stresses on both patients and healthcare providers, and can result in significant costs on the overall health system, for example, with longer stays in hospitals.

Since 2004, Saskatchewan healthcare organizations must, by law, report critical incidents to the Ministry of Health, and take steps to address their causes. Ferguson says, the Ministry needs to better utilize critical incident reporting as a tool to improve patient safety.

The overall number and types of critical incidents reported in Saskatchewan are not trending downwards. In recent years, the Saskatchewan Health Authority has reported the majority of critical incidents, 884 between April 2017 and March 2021. In 91 of the 290 incidents reported in 2019-20, a patient died. Ferguson notes, the Ministry does not appear to determine whether it is notified of all critical incidents. The Ministry does not monitor whether the Authority sufficiently addressed causes of reported critical incidents, and improved patient safety. And, the Ministry does not do enough analysis to identify system-wide improvements needed to keep patients safe, or determine if those improvements occur.

Office of Residential Tenancies

The Office of Residential Tenancies is responsible for adjudicating disputes between landlords and tenants. When parties are unable to reach their own solution, either party can apply to the Office to make rulings and settle the dispute. When asked, the Office often adjudicates the dispute by holding hearings.

According to Provincial Auditor Judy Ferguson, for the nine months ending December 2020, the Office received over 2,500 applications and held over 2,000 hearings. Typically, the majority of the applications are for urgent situations such as those involving eviction, where tenants have not paid rent or rent is in arrears, and where rental property is not properly repaired/maintained. Ferguson says, at December 2020, the Office had generally effective processes to provide timely adjudication of disputes. But, she does have some recommendations. She says, the Office needs to set out clear guidance about what constitutes a conflict of interest for hearing officers. Over 20 lawyers are contracted to act as hearing officers and issue hearing decisions.

She says the Office must promptly follow up when hearing officers have not submitted decisions within two days after the hearing, and document reasons for significant delays in issuing decisions.

Short Term Remand Saskatoon and Area

Short-term remand is the primary reason for ongoing year-over-year increases in the average annual count of adults in custody in Saskatchewan, and presents challenges for the provincial correctional system. That’s according to Provincial Auditor Judy Ferguson.

In 2017, the Ministries of Justice and Attorney General, and of Corrections, Policing and Public Safety applied three strategies to reduce the short-term remand population in Saskatoon and the surrounding area-Early Case Resolution, Rapid Remand Response, and Community Alternatives to Remand. These have since been expanded to other areas of the province.

Ferguson says the Ministries appropriately use committees to strategically engage and coordinate policing and justice services in their remand-reduction strategies. However, she says the Ministries need to determine the specific information needs of these committees.

Also, by September 2020, the Ministries have not decided by how much and by when they expect their various remand strategies to contribute to reducing the number of individuals on remand. In addition, they are not yet measuring and reporting on how quickly, and to what extent their strategies are reducing the number of individuals in short-term remand. Ferguson says they need to set measurable targets, and collect key information from key external partners, such as police, and regularly analyze that information. She says this would help them determine whether their strategies contribute to reducing the remand population, and make timely adjustments to the strategies, where warranted.

Short-term remand refers to individuals held in correctional centres for 31 days or less. Ferguson says
individuals held on remand represent almost two-thirds of the people admitted into custody, and over 40% of the annual average daily counts of individuals in custody in Saskatchewan. She says in 2020, individuals on short-term remand represented an overwhelming majority of total remand admissions to the Saskatoon Correctional Centre.

Regulating Cannabis

The Provincial Auditor wants to see improvements from the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority when it comes to regulating the sale and distribution of recreational cannabis.
Judy Ferguson says increased health risks, especially in minors, associated with the use of cannabis makes the regulation of its sale and distribution important.

Ferguson says the Authority’s processes for regulation are relatively new and, as at December 2020, still evolving. The Authority has been focusing its efforts on educating retail and wholesale permittees about operating requirements and has not yet taken more strict enforcement actions, such as fines.

The Auditor says to effectively regulate past the initial start-up phase, the Authority needs to make improvements.

She says it needs to decide when to shift its focus to taking enforcement actions on identified non-compliance.  It needs to develop a risk-informed inspection plan and actively monitor whether it completes permittee inspections as planned. The Authority must finalize guidelines for actions key to enforcing identified non-compliance with permit requirements consistently; and actively monitor whether permittees sufficiently address identified non-compliance.

Ferguson says the Authority needs to consistently and centrally maintain information about its key activities used to regulate recreational cannabis, so that it can show it carried out these activities as and when expected.  And it must give senior management periodic reports on the nature and extent of identified non-compliance, and related enforcement actions over retail and wholesale recreational permittees.

Disaster Assistance

Saskatchewan’s Provincial Auditor, Judy Ferguson, says for the most part, the Ministry of Corrections has had effective processes to provide timely financial disaster assistance under the Provincial Disaster Assistance Program, and to seek amounts reimbursable under the Federal Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements. But, the Auditor says the Ministry needs to establish a service standard about the expected length of time to assess disaster area designation request; it needs to formalize the expected frequency of determining the status of claimant’s restoration work for local authority claims; and, it needs to analyze key information, such as service standards, and periodically report to senior management as to whether or not these service standards were being met. In cases where expectations are not being met, document rationale as to why.

The Provincial Disaster Assistance Program is designed to provide financial assistance to eligible claimants located in a municipality, a First Nation, or a park designated by the Ministry of Corrections, financial assistance is for un-insurable, essential losses caused by specific natural disasters.

The Ministry claims and receives Government of Canada disaster financial assistance under the Federal Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements.