2022 April

Legislation provides municipalities with authority to regulate nuisances and, if necessary, to take enforcement action. However, your council must first pass a nuisance abatement bylaw.

What is a nuisance?

Usually, nuisances are situations where the condition of a person's property negatively impacts other people's enjoyment of their property.

Enforcing your nuisance abatement bylaw

Municipalities are encouraged to enforce their bylaw as soon as issues are apparent. The longer a nuisance persists on a property, the more likely the situation will worsen.

Council should specifically designate officials who will enforce the bylaw on the municipality's behalf and not try to enforce it themselves.

Nuisance situations should be assessed on external factors only. If your municipality needs to inspect inside a dwelling to determine the appropriate remedial action, your municipality must, in advance, obtain the owner's consent or a warrant to carry out the inspection.

Remedial orders

The bylaw official should ensure any remedial order:

• Is specific and measurable, taking care to identify only those items that are the subject of the order;
• Sets a deadline for the nuisance to be remedied; and
• Includes information about the person's right to appeal the order.

Although council can hear an appeal if they have not appointed a local appeal board, appointing a local appeal board is recommended to provide fairness and objectivity in the bylaw enforcement process.

Completing remedial action

Your municipality may need to complete the remedial action if the property owner fails to do so.

Timing of this remedial work is very important if the property in question is also in the tax enforcement process. The timing can impact whether your municipality can recover its costs.

To recover costs:

1. Complete any remedial work;
2. Add associated costs with this work to property taxes;
3. Take title to the property through tax enforcement;
4. Sell property under The Tax Enforcement Act; and
5. Recover costs since it formed part of the tax arrears, which are eligible for recovery when property is sold.

Costs for remedial work cannot be recovered when the property is sold if title was taken before the remedial work begins.

More information about nuisance abatement can be found in the Municipal Nuisance Guide.

As announced in the Government of Saskatchewan’s 2022-23 Budget, the 2022 education property tax (EPT) mill rates are:

For more information about the EPT mill rate change, please read the March 23 media release or visit the Education Property Tax Mill Rates page.

The Minister of Government Relations and the TSS Steering Committee recently announced 23 municipal projects approved under the Targeted Sector Support (TSS) Initiative. Altogether, more than $1 million in provincial funds will be provided to Saskatchewan municipalities.

The TSS Initiative supports municipalities partnering to strengthen their core municipal responsibilities through projects focused on good governance, capacity building and regional co-operation. Funding is provided through cost-shared grants, covering up to 75 per cent of eligible project costs.

Examples of approved projects include:

• Providing regional governance training for municipal councils and administration.
• Undergoing a feasibility study to determine options for safe water treatment between neighbouring municipalities.
• Drafting a district community plan to guide regional co-operation and development.
• Hosting relationship and capacity building exercises among communities.

This is the third round of successful projects approved under the TSS Initiative, which receives $1.5 million each year from the Municipal Revenue Sharing Program. Since 2020, $4.5 million of provincial funds has been made available to Saskatchewan municipalities through the TSS Initiative. Funding is administered by SUMA on behalf of the TSS Steering Committee.

For more information on the approved projects, please visit saskatchewan.ca.

The published 2021 Census population figures were used to calculate the 2022-23 Municipal Revenue Sharing grants. If you believe there is an error regarding to your municipality's 2021 Census, please contact Statistics Canada.

According to the Statistics Canada website, the deadline to submit a request for formal review is December 31, 2022. Requests for information or for a review of population and/or dwelling census counts should be directed to the Saskatchewan representative for Statistics Canada, Darrick Cheuk, at darrick.cheuk@statcan.gc.ca. The results of any formal reviews will be used for future years' Municipal Revenue Sharing calculations (2023-24 and on).

Visit Statistics Canada's policy on formal review requests of 2021 Census for further information about this process.

For further information regarding Municipal Revenue Sharing:

• visit the program's web page;
• call the Municipal Infrastructure and Finance Branch at 306-787-1262; or
• email mifprovgrants@gov.sk.ca.

Section 44 of The Construction Codes Act provides local authorities with additional options when serving documents related to the construction and occupation of buildings. These documents can include building permits, building official orders, and requests for additional information from building owners/contractors/designers.

Local authorities can serve documents by:

• personal service;
• ordinary mail;
• registered mail;
• posting a copy on the building to which the document relates; or
• any method allowed by The Queens Bench Rules.

Under Section 36 of The Building Code Regulations, local authorities can serve documents related to building construction and occupancy by electronic means, which includes email. However, the recipient must have agreed in writing to receive these documents in electronic form. For example, a building owner may already receive their monthly water bill by email but that does not automatically give the local authority permission to send them a building permit by email. Local authorities should include the option to receive documents by email on their permit application form as a means of obtaining written permission.

Please note that while all documents can be sent by email, some documents must also have a physical copy sent in addition to the email copy. This includes building official orders for unsafe conditions and when a building permit is revoked for any reason. Local authorities are also encouraged to maintain evidence that documents have been sent and the date that they have been sent. This could include:

• saving receipts from Canada Post showing the date a document has been mailed;
• taking pictures of a document posted on a building; and
• printing records of emails as part of the permanent record.

Local authorities, administrators and building officials who have questions can contact the Building and Technical Standards Branch at 306-787-4113 or btstandards@gov.sk.ca.

The Government of Saskatchewan is asking municipalities to encourage their residents and health care providers to provide feedback about virtual care in Saskatchewan, which was implemented two years ago.

All feedback is welcome as we listen to what both patients and health care workers have to say about their experience. And if your residents haven't used virtual care, we'd like to hear about that too.

The information gathered will be used to develop a long-term provincial strategy around virtual care. The province is also seeking input from health system partners and other affected organizations on their experience using virtual care over the last two years.

Please visit virtualcare.saskatchewan.ca to participate. There are several ways to provide input, such as voting in polls, completing a survey, and sharing a story or idea. Participation opportunities will be open until April 30, 2022.

If you require an alternate method of participation, please contact us at 306-787-6750 or email us at virtualcare@health.gov.sk.ca.

Last fall, the Government of Saskatchewan began a two-phase application process under the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program (ICIP) for community, culture and recreation projects.

Eligible funding recipients are reminded that Phase 2 of this intake for complex projects that require more time to complete application closes May 10, 2022.

Phase 1 – which accepted applications for "shovel-ready projects" – closed on January 11, 2022.

To read the full eligibility requirements and to begin the online application process, visit www.saskatchewan.ca/ICIP. If you have any questions, please contact the Municipal Infrastructure and Finance Branch at infra@gov.sk.ca or 306-787-1262.

This is the last opportunity to apply for these types of projects under ICIP in Saskatchewan to allow future intakes to focus on other types of infrastructure.

Other project application intakes will occur in the future.