Prince Albert bylaw officers. (City of Prince Albert website)

By Susan McNeil

Bylaw

Changes coming as bylaw department re-focuses, adopts new technology

Nov 25, 2025 | 5:00 PM

A one-time federal grant that gave the City of Prince Albert three years of funding to create a community safety and well-being plan will soon end, leaving city council with questions as to what comes next.

When they received the funding, the bylaw department was rolled into the new Community Safety and Well-being Department that oversees the city response to homelessness, encampments and more ‘upstream’ approaches like managing addiction and mental health concerns.

Anna Dinsdale, the department manager, updated council on Monday about how the bylaw department has changed since last year and what is coming next.

“I think it’s worth acknowledging at this point that we know that the encampment strategy is an intervention. It’s not a long-term solution for homelessness,” she said. “And it’s worth noting that the Community Safety Wellbeing Division is working proactively on other solutions to address the issue across the community.”

Bylaw has expanded in numbers and focus. The department is also using more technologic means to improve efficiency.

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“The operational improvements focus around the team structure. The re-structure, which has that opportunity, came about through staff attrition and workflow allocation,” Dinsdale said.

“That included the elimination of the parking attendant roles and the transition of those staff into newly created Bylaw 1 positions.”

With more responsibilities, the bylaw office began co-ordinating towing operations, responded to dog barking complaints and the bigger job of encampment removal.

Dinsdale said having more bylaw officers allowed them to take a tiered response to encampments and also work with other groups to expand outreach hours.

They have been operating a hygiene hub staffed by an outreach worker which is a portable washroom and sink. It serves over 50 people per day.

Prince Albert was the first municipality in Saskatchewan to join the federal government’s Homeless Individuals and Families Information System, which collects data, tracks and provides support for people in encampments.

As part of the general bylaw department changes, they also plan to introduce a parking app in January.

The department has helped create an inter-agency group that meets monthly to share information and plan together how they will address problem properties in the city. Frequently, problem properties are used by homeless people or those with more nefarious intentions, such as selling drugs. The public can report properties they suspect are involved in selling drugs or being used by gangs to SCAN via an online form.

The working group includes the provincial Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods officers (SCAN), the fire department, city building inspectors and public health.

In order to make the work of bylaw officers more efficient, they are now using a mobile field app which reduces the need to return to the office.

“Bylaw officers in real time have their tablet in front of them. When a report comes in online, it pops up as a start and they can respond in that field,” Dinsdale explained.

For the public, they can go on the city’s website and look at the encampment dashboard that shows all encampments that were reported by the public and the response to them.

READ MORE: Prince Albert’s homeless population has surged

It does not include encampments that bylaw responds to on their own as part of their regular duties or those that come from non-public referrals.

Coming up are changes to the bylaw reporting form, which will help gather better data.

“We’re working with the GIS division to launch a new bylaw reporting form, which will help streamline the form for members of the public,” Dinsdale said.

They are also going to create a bylaw court with the primary goal to increase compliance with municipal bylaws.

“We’re going to continue to work on efficiencies and technical innovation which will help us track property orders more effectively and also provide more real-time updates to the community.”

In addition to the encampment dashboard, the city has a needle reporting dashboard that works similarly. They track reports on a map, it shows the total number reported and when the report was responded to.

With the funding for the expansion done at the end of March, city council will be left with some decisions to make.

Things like technology changes and new forms will remain, but money is needed to pay for staff wages.

“The relationships and the partnerships and the way we’re working in itself it sustainable so those are all good news,” said Dinsdale. “The additional capacity, however, is very much needed.”

Other initiatives such as the Complex Needs Facility, mobile complex needs teams and homeless shelter fall under the Community Safety and Well-being department but Dinsdale’s report on Monday was focussed on how the bylaw department has been changed.

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susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com

On BlueSky: @susanmcneil.bsky.social