REGINA – Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency President Marlo Pritchard said he will not be stepping aside from that role in the wake of two highly critical reports into the agency’s 2025 wildfires response.
Reports released by MNP and then last week by the office of the Provincial Auditor both called out a lack of preparations for last year’s wildfire season. It also raised questions about whether there might be a shakeup coming to SPSA leadership in response.
Within the last couple of weeks came news the SPSA Vice President of Operations Steve Roberts would be taking retirement at the end of the month. In a conference call with reporters Tuesday morning, SPSA President Pritchard was asked if he, too, would be resigning.
“At this point in time, I will not be stepping down,” said Pritchard. “I will be leading the changes that have been identified in both the MNP report and the auditor's report.”
As for how they plan to respond to the report recommendations, Pritchard pointed to having set up a future preparedness unit, and spoke of “continuous improvement.”
“During the off-season, we did not wait for the MNP report. We did not wait for the auditor's report. We've done significant amount of work in regards to supporting evacuees, should that happen, and speeding out our process at present. And we will continue to work with that and work with direction from our Board.”
As for how the reports caused the SPSA to look at their own processes in terms of communication protocols, Pritchard responded again that “we looked at our processes. But like any audit, it is an opportunity, a roadmap, as you can say, for success, because there's another set of eyes on our processes and how we can strengthen our responses.”
Pritchard said they have also in the off-season “worked on our communication process, especially our presence in social media. I trust that you have seen some of that, and we will continue to expand that work with the communities as well as work across the province to ensure that it's no different than these briefings, that people are aware of the activities that are going on. And we will continue to work internally with our processes.”
The indication is that they will follow all the recommendations in both released reports.
“There are 11 recommendations to the MNP report. There are 11 recommendations to the auditor's report. Some of them are similar. And with the future preparedness unit, I expect that we will be looking at improvements in all of those areas. That's what we're working on, and that's what we're focusing on.”
As for what has changed so far this year, Pritchard pointed to processes behind the scenes in “strengthening our reports, our documentation, which is, of course, an internal process.”
“But the increased communication, the increased work with the communities around that, the initiation of the Provincial Emergency Operations Center, how those communicate across government and across into those impacted communities, those are already in process,” he said.
Pritchard also pointed to supporting evacuees, though he noted “thankfully this year we have not seen a significant number of evacuations.”
But should it happen, Pritchard said they have done a number of improvements on “how we can support in a more expedited fashion those financial supports for those individuals that are evacuated, as well as immediate support.”
“So we've tested those. We're still in the process of even strengthening them further, but those are some of those, I guess, processes that we looked at immediately following the 2025 season and that were reinforced through the MNP review.”
