A new report showed that Saskatoon ranks low in its audit capacity compared to other cities.

The report was made by the Greater Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce, and benchmarked Saskatoon against seven cities — Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, Vancouver, Toronto, Hamilton, and Winnipeg — across five areas. The areas were governance structure, resourcing, planning discipline, annual reporting, and whistleblower accountability.

The report also contained recommended changes to the city based on systems that are already present in other municipalities.

The CEO of the Greater Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce, Jason Aebig, explained that the report will hopefully make its way to city council.

“We presented this, this past week to the city council finance committee, which is the committee ultimately responsible for this area, and I was very pleased with the result, it received a unanimous referral to administration to develop a report and report back from there we’ll see if it makes its way to city council for formal adoption, and then the work begins.”

Aebig went on to say there is an 18-month period before the city’s next budget cycle where he hopes city council will start working on the recommendations.