The two deadlines and the five-year rule

Public-access policy

Due now

Section 117(6), in force since May 14th, 2026. It isn’t tied to either website date.

Minutes and financial statements online

From September 1st, 2027

Council and committee minutes once council approves them, the audited statements and auditor’s report, and those of any corporation the municipality controls.

Bylaws online

From September 1st, 2028

Every bylaw in force. A consolidated copy can replace the separate amending bylaws (s.117(5)).

Kept online

A little over five years

Counted from the end of the calendar year the file was posted. This applies to minutes and statements only. A bylaw stays up while it’s in force.

Fee to view or download

None

Section 117(4)(a). Printed copies can still be charged at actual cost (s.117(8)).

Posting deadline

Not set yet

A regulation under s.117(11) will set it. None had been made as of September 24th, 2026.

September 1st, 2027: the minutes and the statements

The short version: from September 1st, 2027, council minutes, committee minutes, the audited financial statements with the auditor’s report, and the same statements for any corporation the municipality controls have to be on a public website, free to download. Nothing else does.

Subsection (2) of section 117 sets the first date. From then, four kinds of document must be published "in a downloadable format on a website available to the public":

1. the financial statements and the auditor’s report;
2. the financial statements and auditor’s report of any corporation the municipality controls;
3. the minutes of every committee or body council has established, once council has approved them;
4. the council minutes, once approved.

Nothing else has to go online. Resolutions, contracts, accounts paid and consultants’ reports stay where they’ve always been under subsection (1), available at the office during business hours for anyone who asks. A council can post more if it wants to, but the Act only requires minutes and statements.

September 1st, 2028: every bylaw in force

Subsection (3) sets the second date. From September 1st, 2028 every bylaw currently in force goes on the same public website, in the same downloadable form. Only bylaws in force count. A bylaw council repealed thirty years ago never has to go up, and a bylaw repealed next spring can be taken down once the repeal passes.

Subsection (5) reduces the work. Where a municipality "maintains and publishes, in accordance with subsection (3), a consolidated copy of any bylaw that has been amended", the posting rule "does not apply to any bylaw whose sole purpose is to amend a bylaw already in force". In practice, one consolidated zoning bylaw can go up in place of the original and every amendment since, which saves a lot of files for an office with decades of amendments. We’ll cover consolidation in a separate guide.

The posting deadline, still to be set

Both subsections end with the same qualifier: the documents are to be published "in accordance with the prescribed deadlines". Prescribed means set by regulation, and subsection (11) gives the Lieutenant Governor in Council (in practice, cabinet) the power to make one "prescribing deadlines for a municipality to publish documents to a website".

So the Act sets when the obligation starts, and a regulation will set how soon after approval a document has to go up. The Act doesn’t say when that count starts. The meeting that approved the minutes is the likeliest starting point.

That regulation didn’t exist on September 24th, 2026, the last day I checked the Gazette. Until it’s made, there’s no number of days to miss. In the meantime, post within a few days of the meeting where council approved the minutes, and record two dates each time: the day of approval and the day the file went up. Whatever the regulation eventually says, an office with that record can show where it stood.

The five-year rule, which runs a little longer than five years

The short version: the five years start on December 31st of the year a document went up, not on the day it went up. A bylaw stays up for as long as it’s in force.

Subsection (4) has two parts. Clause (a) says nobody may be charged a fee "for accessing or downloading" a posted document. Clause (b) sets how long the document stays up.

The clock doesn’t start on the day of posting. It starts on December 31st of that year and runs five years from there. Two examples:

• Minutes posted on September 1st, 2027 stay up until at least December 31st, 2032.
• Minutes posted in January 2028 stay up until at least December 31st, 2033.

Everything posted in the same calendar year reaches its five years on the same date. "At least" makes five years the minimum, so a council that never takes anything down has met it.

The rule applies to the subsection (2) documents: the minutes and the statements. Bylaws work differently. They’re covered by "currently in force", not by a clock, so a bylaw stays up as long as it’s law and a repealed one can be taken down. Bylaws have no five-year minimum.

What the Act leaves to the council

Section 117 doesn’t say where the website is, who hosts it, what accessibility standard it meets, what file format it uses beyond "downloadable", or whether the municipality owns the domain. The province’s written reply to SUMA resolution 2026-03, Municipal Transparency Requirements, names four acceptable routes, from a municipality’s own website to "a service provider such as King’s Printer or OurSask".

The five-year rule is the one part of section 117 that affects that choice. Whatever a council picks in 2027 has to be serving the same file at the end of 2032, and the minutes posted the following January until the end of 2033. A two-year contract running out, a platform changing hands or a volunteer moving away doesn’t end the obligation. Ask about it before signing anything, with us or anyone else.

One more duty is already in force, and it has nothing to do with the website. Subsection (6) says "the municipality shall establish a policy respecting public access": how to ask for a document, a response time of no more than 30 days, and what printed copies cost. That subsection has been in force since May 14th, 2026, so it can’t wait for 2027.

The 2028 date that isn’t about websites

Bill 43 changes a lot besides section 117, and one of those changes often comes up in the same conversation. New section 94.1 requires every municipality to offer orientation training to council members within 120 days after each general election, "beginning with the 2028 general election". People hear "2028" and "Bill 43" and assume it’s connected to the bylaw date.

It’s a separate section on a separate subject, and the training doesn’t change what goes on the website or when. If the two come up together at the council table, the section numbers settle it: 117 for the website, 94.1 for the training.

Where to read it yourself

The Act is Bill 43, The Municipalities Modernization and Red Tape Reduction Act, chapter 25 of the Statutes of Saskatchewan 2026, assented to on May 14th, 2026. The Legislative Assembly publishes the 58-page bill as a PDF. Section 3-23 of the bill is the part that adds the new section 117 to The Municipalities Act. The same rule goes into The Cities Act as section 91 and The Northern Municipalities Act, 2010 as section 133. The wording is parallel, and the cities’ list is one clause longer because it already includes their public accounts.

The Saskatchewan Gazette of June 26th, 2026 says which sections are in force. Its table lists section 3-23 among the provisions in force from assent, so section 117 has been law since May 14th, 2026, even though the dates in it are still ahead. The same table lists section 3-24, which would add the municipality’s public accounts to the online list, as not yet in force, and every issue since has said the same. That change will appear in the Gazette when it takes effect.