Saskatchewan’s Official Opposition says emails it obtained through a freedom of information request reveal the province’s public safety agency had a final draft copy of an independent report into last year’s wildfire response months before its public release.
The internal emails, shared with Global News by the NDP, include a March 25 email from an MNP employee addressed to two Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency (SPSA) officials, delivering the final draft of the independent report.
This was months before the province publicly released the report on June 12, alongside 11 action items in response to the recommendations set out in the document, following weeks of delay and mounting public pressure over an unknown timeline.
“If they had this report in March and they push it off until June, there’s a real dodging of accountability in that process,” said Jordan McPhail, northern affairs critic for the Official Opposition, on Wednesday.
The province launched an independent review of its 2025 wildfire response last fall, following devastation that marked it as the second-worst on record, with more than 500 wildfires burning through over 2.9 million hectares.
The report was initially slated to conclude before this wildfire season on March 31.
But Michael Weger, Saskatchewan’s community safety minister, told media at a technical briefing days after the initial deadline that MNP needed more time to finish the report.
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“In consultation with MNP, it was determined that some additional time would be required to ensure that the review was comprehensive, and also included the involvement of some fire behaviour specialists as well,” Weger said on April 8.
Two days later, on April 10, an internal email from an SPSA executive director, who is now at the helm of a unit set up to respond to recommendations set out in the report, says the agency is looking to respond to the draft document “early next week.”
“I don’t anticipate material concerns or suggested edits from the SPSA based on my internal discussions to date,” the staffer says in the obtained email to an MNP employee.
However, Weger says the SPSA had to provide MNP with “further documentation” and address some of the company’s “unanswered questions” between April 27 and May 22, but could not provide further details on what this documentation or information entailed.
“Unequivocally, in no way did I ever direct anyone to delay the processing of this report. We trusted SPSA officials and MNP to work together to come up with a final report,” Weger told Global News in an interview Wednesday.
Weger says he does not have the specifics on what further information the SPSA needed to provide.
Global News has reached out to MNP to gain a clearer picture of the timeline of events, but the company says it does not speak on client work, directing inquiries to the SPSA.
The SPSA is referring matters to Weger, who says he received the final report alongside SPSA president Marlo Prichard on May 22, and shared emails showing when he says he first received the report with Global News.
Weger previously told the media on June 12, when he released the independent review to the public, that he had first received the report on May 22.
As for the delays, Weger says March 31 was “an optimistic deadline.”
“I think maybe there was a bit more work there in putting that review together than maybe initially anticipated,” he said.
In response to the review, the province established what it calls the Future Preparedness and Implementation Unit to monitor and implement the 11 action items outlined in the report. Weger says he is receiving “regular briefings” from that group, with announcements forthcoming as the province reaches the tail end of the wildfire season.
It is currently unknown what the announcements will entail.
Last year’s wildfire season cost the government $392 million in extra expenses, according to its latest budget, accounting for the largest portion of the $970 million in over-budget spending.
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