Sandra Masters is a Canadian politician who serves as the 35th and current mayor of Regina. Masters is the first elected female mayor of either of Saskatchewan's major cities.^[1] She was first elected in the 2020 Saskatchewan municipal elections.^[2]

Masters moved to Regina in 1999 and worked for Richardson Agriculture as the manager of credit for the Prairie Provinces.^[3] Since 2014 she had served on the board of Regina Exhibition Association Limited (REAL), but she resigned her role as board chair in order to run for mayor.^[4]

Political career

Masters launched her campaign for Regina's mayoralty on September 16, 2020.^[3] Her campaign focused on developing an anti-poverty strategy for the city, supporting the Regina Police Service and local businesses, and reducing city administration costs by 15%.^[5][6] Masters won the election, unseating two-term incumbent mayor Michael Fougere in a nine-person race with 46.4 per cent of the vote.^[2] This made Masters the first person since Pat Fiacco to become mayor of Regina with no previous city council experience.^[7] She was sworn in as mayor on November 23, 2020.^[8]

Mayor of Regina

As Mayor, Masters became a backer of Regina's catalyst committee, which is tasked with overseeing the potential development of five potential downtown revitalization projects worth nearly $500 million, including new baseball, soccer, and aquatic facilities, a new event centre, and a modernized central library.^[9] Masters hired the city's first female manager, Niki Anderson, in 2022 following the dismissal of Chris Holden.^[10] However, by the mid-way point of her mayoral term, Masters also found herself leading a divided city council that saw in-fighting, persistent formal complaints against councillor Terina Nelson, and a fractious debate over affordability and a plan to address homelessness. The latter included councillor Andrew Stevens being part of a lawsuit, filed by lawyer and fellow councillor Dan LeBlanc, against Anderson over budgetary procedural matters.^[9] Masters labelled the lawsuit as sexist and was accused of retaliating against LeBlanc by pushing for his removal as the City Council representative on the board of directors of Community and Social Impact Regina.^[11][12] After LeBlanc's removal from that board, over 100 citizens submitted a letter to Masters condemning her response to the controversy.^[13] In September 2023, after continued debate over the homelessness issue, Masters revealed continued division on council when she stated that she did not trust Stevens, Leblanc, or councillors Shannon Zachidniak or Cheryl Stadnichuk, who all voted in favour of a motion to declare a homelessness emergency in Regina.^[14][15]

In December 2022, Masters stated that her accomplishments to that point in time centred on bolstering local pride in Regina.^[9] However, in March 2023 Masters courted controversy as part of a failed bid to re-brand Tourism Regina as "Experience Regina," a campaign that was ultimately accused of promoting the city through the use of sexual innuendo. Although Masters criticized the campaign in the wake of the controversy, it was reported that her office ordered merchandise from the campaign, including a sweatshirt branded with the controversial phrase, "the city that rhymes with fun."^[16]

Election results