Volume III Released & Quarterly Voters List Updates
Volume III Statement of Expenditures Released
Earlier this week, I tabled Volume III in A Report on the Twenty-Ninth General Election, Statement of Expenditures with the Legislative Assembly. This publication provides extensive details on the financial costs of the last general election including the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
I would like to draw your specific attention to Chapter 12 of the report which provides the first ever administrative review of the province’s political finance regime. You may have participated in the research and data collection that helped to inform this review, and if so, thank you for your input.
This review looks at the administrative aspects of Elections Saskatchewan’s management of the political finance processes – items such as training, instructional documentation, our ELMS system, etc. It does not consider legislative changes – those will be included in my forthcoming Volume IV report, Chief Electoral Officer’s Recommendations for Legislative Reform.
Within the political finance review, I have made eleven administrative commitments that I believe will improve our processes and result in greater service to you, to your parties, and to your candidates. If you have feedback on the commitments I have made or on the results of the political finance administrative review, I would be pleased to hear from you.
You can find a PDF version of the report on our website at https://www.elections.sk.ca/reports-data/reports-publications/. Next week, I will have a hard copy mailed to your office.
Voters List – Quarterly Updates
At our annual meeting a few weeks back, I was asked if it would be possible for Elections Saskatchewan to provide parties with voters list updates more than once per year.
After consulting the legislation to ensure this would be allowable, I engaged with our team and we will be able to provide quarterly voters list updates to parties that have signed an information sharing agreement (ISA) with my office. These quarterly updates will be available around the end of March, June, September and December, and the instructions for accessing the data will be the same as past extracts using our secure portal. This change will require small changes to our existing ISA – we will be in touch with an updated appendix to ensure the quarterly updates are covered within the document. If your party does not have a signed ISA and would like to learn more, contact Jennifer Colin, Deputy CEO, at [email protected]
Finally, if you have questions on how to gain access to this data through our secure sharing site, contact Jordan Arendt, Director of IT, at [email protected] and he will be happy to assist you.
Business Manager Communications
As part of the political finance administrative review published in Volume III, I committed to expanding and developing our business manager training efforts. I know that this is a concern for you as Chief Official Agent and it is also a concern for Elections Saskatchewan.
As part of our preparations for the pending Saskatoon Meewasin by-election (the resignation of the MLA for Saskatoon Meewasin won’t be official until July 1), we are reviewing and revising several of our training documents and information material we create for business managers. I look forward to sharing these with you soon and gathering feedback on whether this has resulted in improved business manager understanding and activity.
As Canada Day approaches, I hope that you have time to enjoy some summer weather and take a well-deserved break. I will continue to be in touch with you on our plans for the pending Meewasin by-election as well as my broader legislative reform efforts.
Sincerely,
Dr. Michael Boda
Chief Electoral Officer
Province of Saskatchewan