2023 October

The Targeted Sector Support (TSS) Initiative is a cost-shared grant program that uses a portion of Municipal Revenue Sharing ($1.5 million per fiscal year) to support municipalities to kick-start funding to undertake new projects that focus on good governance, partnerships, planning and collaboration. The program is managed by the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA) on behalf of the TSS Steering Committee that consists of SUMA, the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, New North and the Government of Saskatchewan.

Applications are being accepted now; the intake will close on November 30, 2023.

To learn more, please download this TSS fact sheet. To apply, please visit the Targeted Sector Support Initiative page.

Saskatchewan local authorities are required to have a building bylaw approved by the Minister under The Construction Codes Act . The bylaw can be either their own or the model building bylaw found in The Building Code Regulations (the BC Regulations). If a local authority does not have its own building bylaw by the date listed in the BC Regulations, the model building bylaw will be applied. Local authorities must administer and enforce the model building bylaw as though they had adopted it themselves.

The BC Regulations lists the following local authorities defined under The Municipalities Act as needing to have their own building bylaw by December 31, 2023:

• Towns,
• Villages,
• Resort villages,
• Rural municipalities, and
• Municipal districts.

To receive ministerial approval, local authorities must submit two certified true copies to the Building and Technical Standards (BTS) branch within 60 days of council’s approval of a bylaw. Please note that physical copies must be submitted to BTS branch – submissions cannot be accepted by email or fax. Building bylaws are not valid until they receive ministerial approval, which can take up to 60 days.

Any local authority who does not currently have a building bylaw and does not want to have the model building bylaw apply to them needs to have their bylaw submitted to BTS branch by November 1, 2023. This will ensure it’s approved before the end of the year. While BTS branch will make every effort to approve submitted bylaws before the end of the year, only bylaws submitted by that date are guaranteed to be reviewed by December 31, 2023.

If you have questions, please contact Building and Technical Standards Branch at 306-787-4113 or btstandards@gov.sk.ca.

Are you aware that Saskatchewan had the highest rate of GDP growth in the country from 2021 to 2022, at 5.7 per cent? Much of that growth can be attributed to the strength of the province’s export sales. As an export driven economy, the hardworking people who produce goods in Saskatchewan rely on access to markets within Canada and around the world. With access to markets, not only do the province’s trading partners benefit from the goods and services we provide but the wealth that exports generate helps fund our healthcare, highways, schools and infrastructure.

Access to these markets is facilitated by Saskatchewan’s participation in several trade agreements. Under these agreements, procurement data is required from Saskatchewan municipalities, as well as other entities, on an annual basis. To gather and submit this data, the province’s Ministry of Trade and Export Development conducts an annual survey. This formal request was sent to your email box from the Trade Procurement Reporting email account on October 12, 2023, so please check your inboxes. Survey responses are due by end of day December 1, 2023.

Before beginning the survey, consider reviewing the Guide and the Procurement Calculation Tool included with the survey link. These documents are provided solely to assist in understanding and complying with the reporting obligations. They are not intended to be an interpretive guide, do not constitute legal advice, and do not replace the specific obligations of trade agreements.

Should you have any questions, please email tradeprocurementreporting@gov.sk.ca.

The Government of Saskatchewan introduced road maintenance agreements (RMAs) to allow municipalities to cover the incremental cost that occurs above regular maintenance costs due to the increased pressures of heavy or bulk hauls. In 2021, the Ministry of Government Relations amended The Municipalities Regulations to allow for the setting of regional rates based on the Ministry of Highways' Area Transportation Planning Committees (APTC). These rates are to be reviewed every two years and updated based on municipal transportation services expenditures in each APTC region, as well as truck traffic, road damage and payload data from the Ministry of Highways. The first set of rates were implemented for 2022 and 2023.

In accordance with Section 12.1 of The Municipalities Regulations, the Ministry of Government Relations has updated the regional RMA rates for the years 2024 and 2025. Please see the table below for the updated rates. The new rates are effective for 2024 and 2025.

^{Rates are per tonne per kilometre.}

You can access the 2024-2025 Road Maintenance Agreement Regional Rates Map. Visit Road and Streets Construction and Maintenance for more information on RMAs, including a template agreement.

If you have questions, please call 306-787-2653 or email property.tax@gov.sk.ca.

Municipalities can pass a bylaw to charge gravel crushers and extractors a gravel extraction licence fee. Formulas found in Section 8.1 of The Municipalities Regulations set out the maximum fee a municipality may establish. The formula was implemented in 2008 and is used to update the maximum fee every two years.

Effective January 1, 2024, the maximum gravel extraction rates for 2024 and 2025 will be:

$0.194 per cubic metre
$0.148 per cubic yard
$0.104 per tonne
$0.097 per ton

The maximum fee is increased based on the annual percentage changes for the “all-items” consumer price index (CPI) for Saskatchewan for the two years before the first year the new rates are to come into effect. The rate increase for 2024 and 2025 represents a CPI inflation rate of 3.3 per cent in 2021 and 7.1 per cent in 2022.

The rates are also found on the Road and Streets Construction and Maintenance page.

Further Information

If you have questions or comments about these fee rates, please call 306-787-2680 to speak to a municipal advisor.