When Rogers Television asked the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health why the full Lloydminster health assessment had not been released to the public, the ministry’s response was specific.
Dale Hunter, Senior Media Relations Consultant with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health, provided the following statement to Rogers TV:
“The Lloydminster Health Services Needs Assessment contains confidential financial, commercial, scientific, technical and labour relations information that was supplied to and developed by the authors in confidence. The public release of this information could interfere with future contractual negotiations governments may wish to undertake.”
That is the justification the province gave for withholding all 261 pages of a publicly funded health planning document from the community it was written about.
Border Pulse has read all 261 pages. The information Hunter described is not there.
What the document actually contains
The Lloydminster Health Service Needs Assessment is a health infrastructure planning document. It contains population projections, service utilization data, capacity gap analysis, staffing ratios, benchmark comparisons with similar communities, and recommendations for service improvements across 13 health service areas.
It does not contain confidential financial information. The only financial figure in the document is the contract value for the assessment itself, $262,260, which appears in Appendix 4.6 alongside the project schedule. That figure has been publicly reported.
It does not contain commercial information supplied in confidence. The document was produced by Cornerstone Planning Group and AnalysisWorks under a government contract, for a public policy purpose. It contains no pricing, no proprietary methodology marked confidential, and no third-party business information of any kind.
It does not contain scientific or technical information supplied in confidence. The methodology sections describe standard health planning approaches used by consultants across the country. Nothing is marked proprietary. Nothing is marked confidential within the document itself.
On labour relations, the document contains three references to collective bargaining and union agreements. Each is a passing planning caveat of the kind that appears in any health system document. Two note that staffing changes would require alignment with union agreements. One notes that allied staff positions, as union positions, cannot be incentivized for recruitment. None of these references constitutes labour relations information supplied in confidence. None of them reveals a bargaining position. None of them would give a union any advantage at a negotiating table.
There are no salary figures. There are no wage rates. There are no terms of any employment agreement. There is no information a union, a contractor, or a competitor could use.
The exemptions the ministry cited
When the ministry denied Border Pulse’s freedom of information request for the same document on June 25, 2026, it cited four sections of The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act: sections 18(1)(d), 18(1)(e), 19(1)(b) and 19(c)(iii).
Section 19(1)(b) requires the government to refuse access to records containing financial, commercial, scientific, technical or labour relations information supplied in confidence by a third party.
Section 19(c)(iii) requires refusal where disclosure could reasonably be expected to result in similar information no longer being supplied to the government.
These are the same categories Hunter cited to Rogers TV. They are the legal basis for withholding a document that does not contain the information those sections are designed to protect.
BorderPulse filed an IPC appeal on June 26, 2026, challenging the denial on five grounds. One of those grounds is precisely this: the document was not produced by a third party supplying confidential commercial information. It was produced by a contractor delivering a public policy product under a government contract. A purchased report is not a cabinet confidence.
The same day, a press release
The government issued a four-page public summary of the assessment’s findings on June 25, 2026, the same day it denied Border Pulse’s freedom of information request. It has now told Rogers TV the document was too sensitive to release.
That summary named specific service gaps. It quoted ministers. It described findings from the same 261 pages the ministry simultaneously characterized as containing confidential information that could interfere with future contractual negotiations.
The government released what it wanted the public to know. It withheld what the public asked to see. It then gave Rogers TV a legal-sounding explanation for why it had done so.
That explanation is not supported by the document.
Border Pulse contacted the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health for comment on this story. No response was received by deadline. This story will be updated if a response is provided.
Read more: Lloydminster Health Assessment: Story 1 – The suppression
