Bill 43: what Saskatchewan councils must publish online, and by when.

In force since

May 14th, 2026

Section 117 took effect the day Bill 43 received assent. Each publishing duty below has its own start date.

Public-access policy

Required since May 14th, 2026

Council needs a policy that explains how to request a record (on paper or electronically), commits to answering within 30 days, and sets the price of a printed copy.

By September 1st, 2027

Minutes and financial statements

Approved council minutes, approved minutes of every committee or body council has set up, and the financial statements with the auditor’s report. If the municipality controls a corporation, its statements and auditor’s report go up too. All of it has to be downloadable from a public website.

By September 1st, 2028

Every bylaw in force

If you post a consolidated version of an amended bylaw, you don’t have to post the amending bylaws separately. Repealed bylaws can be taken down.

Kept online

At least 5 years

The five years count from the end of the calendar year the document went up, so minutes posted in 2027 have to stay online until at least December 31st, 2032. Bylaws stay up as long as they’re in force.

Fees

None to view or download

Residents can’t be charged to view or download, which rules out a paywall and, in practice, a login. The office can still charge actual cost for a printed copy, as set out in its policy.

Posting deadline

Not yet set

The province can set, by regulation, how soon after approval a document has to go up. It hadn’t done so as of September 20th, 2026.

Where

Any public website

The province has named four acceptable options: the municipality’s own site, a regional site shared by several municipalities, a SARM or SUMA portal, or a service provider. A Facebook page isn’t on the list.

What Bill 43 is

The Municipalities Modernization and Red Tape Reduction Act adds the same rule to three statutes: The Cities Act (new section 91, one clause longer because cities already publish public accounts), The Municipalities Act (new section 117) and The Northern Municipalities Act, 2010 (new section 133). Towns, villages, resort villages and rural municipalities fall under The Municipalities Act, so section 117 is the one that applies to almost every council in the province.

The Saskatchewan Gazette of June 26th, 2026 lists section 3-23 of the Bill, which creates the new section 117, among the provisions that took effect on assent. So the section has been law since May, even though the obligations in it start on the dates below.

Four documents due September 1st, 2027

Section 117(2) requires four of the thirteen document classes listed in section 117(1) to be published "in a downloadable format on a website available to the public":

• the financial statements and the auditor’s report,
• the financial statements and auditor’s report of any corporation the municipality controls,
• the minutes of any committee or body council has established, once council has approved them,
• the council minutes, once approved.

Resolutions, contracts, accounts paid, the debentures register, oaths and consultants’ reports don’t change. People can still inspect them at the office, but they don’t have to go online. Two items on the list are easy to miss. Committee minutes include boards like the recreation board and the fire committee, and the controlled-corporation line applies to any municipality that owns a utility.

Every bylaw in force, due September 1st, 2028

Section 117(3) adds every bylaw currently in force, posted the same way on the same site. Section 117(5) cuts the work down. If a municipality publishes a consolidated copy of an amended bylaw, it doesn’t need to post the bylaws that only amended it. A zoning bylaw with eleven amendments becomes one file instead of twelve.

Five years online, free to download

Minutes posted on September 1st, 2027 stay up until at least December 31st, 2032. Section 117(4)(a) forbids any fee "for accessing or downloading", which in practice rules out a login as well as a paywall. Bylaws don’t have a five-year clock. They stay up while they’re in force.

The policy council has to adopt now

Section 117(6) requires the municipality to "establish a policy respecting public access" to the records. The policy has to cover how to ask for a record in physical and electronic form, a response time of no more than 30 days, and fees for printed copies. Subsection (8) says the fee "must not exceed the actual costs", and subsection (9) says what may count: wages, materials such as ink, paper and removable storage media, and other costs directly and solely related to the copy. In practice council adopts the policy, and that duty applies today. It isn’t tied to the 2027 date.

Posting a document makes it published material

Section 117(10) treats a posted document as "published material" under clause 3(1)(a) of The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Any personal information needs to be redacted before the file goes up.

What’s still to come

Both dates are qualified by the words "in accordance with the prescribed deadlines". Section 117(11) lets the province prescribe "deadlines for a municipality to publish documents to a website". We expect that to be a number of days after council approves a document, but the Act doesn’t say when the clock starts. As of September 20th, 2026 the province hadn’t made that regulation. Section 3-24 of the Bill, which isn’t in force yet, will add the municipality’s public accounts (the remuneration paid to each employee and councillor, and the grants and contributions made) to the online list. The 2020 section that creates public accounts, section 185.1, isn’t in force either. Both changes will appear in the Gazette when they take effect.

Where the documents can be hosted

The Act doesn’t say. It doesn’t name a host, a file format beyond "downloadable", or an accessibility standard, and it doesn’t require the municipality’s own domain. In its written response to SUMA resolution 2026-03, Municipal Transparency Requirements, the Government of Saskatchewan named four acceptable routes: a municipality’s own website, "a website jointly operated by multiple municipalities in a region", "an online portal hosted by SARM or SUMA", or "a service provider such as King’s Printer or OurSask".

A Facebook page isn’t on the list, and we don’t think it meets the wording either. Facebook can remove a post at any time, and files attached to posts are hard to download reliably, so it’s difficult to call that "a website available to the public".

Sources

• Bill 43, The Municipalities Modernization and Red Tape Reduction Act, Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan, 30th Legislature, 2nd Session. Assented to May 14th, 2026. Chapter 25 of the Statutes of Saskatchewan 2026.
• The Saskatchewan Gazette, June 26th, 2026: the tables of sections in force and not yet in force, and the Office of the King’s Printer’s offer to host municipal bylaws. Gazette issues to September 18th, 2026 were read for regulations; none has been made under section 117.
• SUMA resolution 2026-03, Municipal Transparency Requirements, and the Government of Saskatchewan’s response.
• Provincial municipal directory, the source of our count of 761 municipalities and their websites on September 8th, 2026, re-checked on September 19th.