A year of ‘highs and lows’: Saskatoon Mayor Cynthia Block looks back on 2025

Saskatoon’s mayor says 2025 was a year of “highs and lows.”

Mayor Cynthia Block sat down with 650 CKOM’s Lara Fominoff at her office in Saskatoon City Hall to look back at the year and discuss some of the successes and challenges the city saw in 2025.

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The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

LARA FOMINOFF: Tell me about some of the most memorable moments that you had as mayor. And just over the last year, what sticks out in your mind?

CYNTHIA BLOCK: Well, there’s certainly been some highs and lows. I mean, the opioid crisis, the overdoses, the situation with people who are unhoused in our city, continues to be very challenging, but we have partnerships now in place that I think are starting to shift that. The provincial government has stepped up with dollars to support warming centers and cooling centers. I like to call them drop-in centers, because the commitment is for 365 days a year, and I think that’s going to be a significantly important step as we move into 2026.

I think the establishment of Indigenous peacekeepers will be a lens that we have not seen before in our city. It has happened in a small microcosm of a pilot project between Saskatoon Tribal Council, the province and the City of Saskatoon at the Central Urban Metis Federation Inc. site over the course of the summer months, and it was very successful in that people felt welcome. People stayed. They learned to connect to services and and to trust in the ways in which the Sawēyihtotān peacekeepers were helping them to understand and to accept the supports that were being offered by expanding that, which is the direction for 2026 following our budget. We will have an opportunity to see if we can’t expand that into business districts to support both businesses and customers, so I think those pieces are pretty big for me.

For 2025, another really important piece is the success that we saw in housing is critically needed. It is one of the many reasons that we are faced with so many people unhoused right now, is that there simply isn’t enough housing. So the amount of basically market housing that has been created over the past year will make a significant difference. We also have had some wrap-around support projects that have opened… the Shirley and Aggie homes for Indigenous women facing domestic violence. And I know we had seniors housing open up at Columbia Manor in Eastview. All of these help to make sure that people have a roof over their head and a place to belong, and I think these are things that we’re working at together, and I think we will begin to see some significant results as that housing comes on stream and we are able to get people into those units.

The Baydo Project on 25th Street downtown, a big chunk of that is going to open in early 2026 – I believe just under 300 of those units, will come on stream in early 2026. Again, all of that will help to shake out the market in a way that gives everyone an opportunity to start moving through the continuum we’re getting.

Saskatoon has never invested more in building better roads and creating safer sidewalks and multi-use pathways than we did in 2025, and one of the things I was really proud of in our budget is that we didn’t we didn’t back off. We will continue to make sure that we are building Saskatoon in a way that keeps those basic infrastructure pieces on par with what best standards look like. We want a city where people can move around safely, and active transportation that we can be proud of. The modern public transportation system took a huge leap forward in 2025 (with) the amount of construction that we saw all around the city. The good news is that means every area of the city is experiencing that renewal – that roads and sidewalks and all of that basic infrastructure is important in every neighborhood, so we were definitely spreading it around. And then to add on top of that, some of the initial construction work that needs to be done to support the Link, our modern public transportation system, bus rapid transit; a lot of platform work was done this year (and) a lot of the underground fiber optics to control the intersection lighting so that we have intelligent lights that keep those busses on time and keep them moving. So a lot of exciting things for as we build a modern, 21st-century city.

Saskatoon Mayor Cynthia Block says there were many “highs and lows” during the year. (Lara Fominoff/650 CKOM)

I wanted to ask you about public safety as well. That’s still that’s a big concern for residents in Saskatoon. If I’m not mistaken, it was you or somebody else on council that said we have a commitment for transit officers beginning next year, and that we would be the only city in Canada of this size to have dedicated transit officers. Tell me about the importance of breaking that ground.

BLOCK: Community safety was certainly on the minds of many residents and businesses in 2025, and council responded by ensuring that we had 24/7 peacekeepers at our pilot projects to support the washrooms and showers at CUMFI, and we also added new police resources to the downtown, like a new type of security detail to ensure that we had a more rigorous program, so that we had more visual presence of security in the downtown more often. And yet we are still seeing that we need to fill some gaps, so that is one of the significant things that we did in the budget process; to add Indigenous peacekeepers as a pilot project to support business districts in the core. So downtown, Riversdale, sorting through what’s the best way to approach that, but we know that they’re needed. And if they have success in in connecting people who are unhoused with the services they need, that will be a big help to everyone. The other piece about transit, that was a big decision, because it’s a new service and certainly not something that we considered lightly. I think that cities right across Canada are understanding why we must take a new step to keep everyone safe on our buses, and Saskatoon has definitely reached the point where I think we need to try another approach. So the officers that will be hired for transit, and to support people who are both riders and operators, will happen over time. While the funding will start to flow in 2026, it’s kind of a graduated thing, where it’s more in 2027 we actually see that full impact, because it’s going to take time to build it, to create a service that we’ve never done before. Policing on the streets of Saskatoon is a little different than when you’re on the buses or otherwise trying to make sure people are safe on buses, and I think that we will be able to do that.

You told me last year, “I can tell you for this coming year, for 2025 I can tell you that the mayor’s office will be steely focused on homelessness. This is foundational to our way forward, and the council that has been elected seems pretty unified that this is the single biggest issue that we face, and there’s a lot of determination to find solutions.” How do you feel? Have you and council met that challenge?

BLOCK: In terms of being steely focused, I can assure you that that has been happening. There’s so many other aspects that are connected. And as mayor, all of you will know that there are a lot of demands that go outside of what your main focuses are. But we also have to make sure that we’re supporting all of the other things that people care about, all the services that people require every day, the quality of life that we all strive to create every day for ourselves and our families and our neighborhoods. There’s a lot going on, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it, even though it has been challenging. And sometimes I wish things could be different. And I also wish that I had a much larger staff to help to deploy some of these bigger pieces, but we are working in partnership and I think this is a really important step that was taken in 2025 – the province coming to the table to guarantee a place for people to be 365 days a year is a huge step forward in our ability to move to those next steps. We approved a new shelter in 2025 that the province will begin to operate, I believe sometime in 2026, and these are the steps that we have to take in the interim. I mentioned housing. That has to be the end goal if we really, truly want a city where everything calms down and we all feel like we have a quality of life. There is significant evidence to support the need for people to have housing. And by housing, I don’t mean a white picket fence and a front yard and those kinds of things. I think people get a little bit confused about what that means, but it does mean a place that that is yours, regardless of its size, with a door, and for some folks, they’re going to need some other kind of supports. They’re not going to be able to go directly into unsupported housing, but supported housing has worked extremely well in the city before, and if we’re able to get more of it, I think we’ll begin to see some significant change.

What is your message to residents over the holiday season and into next year?

BLOCK: I would like to send just a huge thank you to every resident in our city, to every community group, community association, every volunteer, every business owner. The amount of effort that citizens of Saskatoon, the residents of Saskatoon, put into making Saskatoon a great place to be is really jaw dropping for me, as mayor, over the course of the past year. It’s a different lens that I get to see when I go out into community. It’s in all parts of our city, and it just gives me so much hope. People are passionate about their neighborhoods. People care deeply. Sometimes they’re super mad because things aren’t going they want the way they want it to go, or the way they think it should, or they think we’ve got it wrong, but they’re coming to us because they care deeply about their neighborhoods and their neighbors. And to me, that says something really important about what makes Saskatoon special. And I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who gets up every day and tries their best to support you know, their families and their neighbors. It’s a beautiful, magical part about being a Saskatonian. So as we move on into the year ahead, I would just say merry Christmas, happy holidays. May you have a safe and healthy and prosperous 2026.