Manitoba·AnalysisManitoba’s NDP government has not reacted very quickly to complaints about the Manitoba municipal board.Changes to unpopular municipal board are not exactly galloping alongBartley Kives · CBC News · Posted: Nov 30, 2025 7:00 AM EST | Last Updated: 2 hours agoListen to this articleEstimated 6 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.The Manitoba Municipal Board awarded the Granite Curling Club an effective veto over a residential complex planned for its parking lot. (Warren Kay/CBC)As Manitobans are acutely aware by now, one of Premier Wab Kinew’s favourite sayings is the economic horse pulls the social cart.But Kinew’s NDP government has not reacted very quickly to a situation where an appointed provincial body has, on several occasions, directed that horse to trot off the road and run in circles until it loses momentum and begins to forget where it was supposed to go in the first place.The body is the innocuously named Manitoba municipal board. Up until four years ago, this quasi-judicial provincial body was best known for being the place Winnipeg homeowners could go when they didn’t agree with Board of Revision decisions about the assessed value of their properties.But in 2021, the board received additional responsibilities. Brian Pallister’s Progressive Conservative government expanded the board’s powers to allow its provincially appointed members ability to reverse land-use decisions made by elected municipal councils.The Pallister government was motivated by a belief, articulated in a treasury board secretariat report, that the City of Winnipeg was hostile to new development. Expanding the board’s powers was seen as a way for the province to ensure city council decisions to say no to developments would be reconsidered and those developments would go forward instead.The PC government was not armed with any qualitative data showing the city was predisposed to saying no to development at the council level. It could have been argued the opposite is true, given that the city is hungry for cash and property-tax revenue makes up a majority of the city’s revenue ($842 million in the coming year alone).Nonetheless, the board received expanded powers and the result so far has been anything but a decisive victory for developers hoping to ride their economic horses to where they intended their mounts to go.Board a ‘litigious and costly forum’: reviewIn the case of a 199-unit apartment complex proposed for Roblin Boulevard in Charleswood, city council approved the development, but the municipal board turned around and quashed it in 2022. In the case of a 111-unit apartment complex slated for Granite Way on the edge of downtown, the board placed a caveat on the council-approved development to allow the Granite Curling Club an effective veto over the final plan.These are just the two most contentious decisions by the board. A provincial review encompassing 250 interviews with officials from 95 Manitoba municipalities found the board makes inconsistent decisions, takes too long to make them and sometimes doesn’t even inform people where its hearings are taking place.That review, conducted by consulting firm Braid Solutions, found a unanimous belief among Manitoba mayors, councillors and other officials that “the municipal board has become a more litigious and costly forum instead of functioning as an independent tribunal intended to resolve disputes between parties in an expeditious manner.”This was not a surprising result. Mayors and reeves in Manitoba raised red flags about the board’s expanded powers even before they went into effect. But the NDP government has not acted with any urgency to amend the legislation that expanded the board’s powers.Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew says his NDP government is allowing municipal governments to reclaim decision-making powers they lost under the former Progressive Conservative government. (Bryce Hoye/CBC)In August 2024, it took only a week for the Kinew government to abandon a different aspect of the same legislation: A directive to create a new regional planning framework for Winnipeg and the surrounding municipalities.The Kinew government was fully in support of what was called Plan 20-50 until the premier announced municipalities could opt out of the Winnipeg Metropolitan Region. That announcement and subsequent legislation effectively killed the planning framework.Kinew called that legislation a “freedom bill” and continues to proudly proclaim his government allows municipal governments to reclaim decision-making powers they lost under the former PC government.He made this statement again on Wednesday, on stage at the Association of Manitoba Municipalities conference in Winnipeg.But what the premier was asked about was not the long-dead Plan 20-50, but the still very active municipal board that far more mayors and reeves were upset about.’Untangling a mess’: municipal relations ministerThe Braid report was completed on Oct. 28, 2024. The NDP sat on it for an entire calendar year before finally making it public.The report recommends ratcheting back some of the board’s powers and ensuring it acts more like a supreme court of municipal land-use decisions rather than an agent of chaos that adds another layer of uncertainty to the prospect any development can proceed.Specifically, the report recommends scrapping a provision that automatically triggers a municipal board hearing on the basis of the number of people who object to a decision by a municipal council.Instead, the review recommends the board only hold hearings into decisions if someone applies for a provincial appeal, much the same way people do for appeals at the municipal level. The review also recommends constraining board decisions to options based on information that came before municipal councils — meaning, the board could only say yes or no to a development and not add new conditions or place new caveats upon it.The review also recommends the board become more picky about the hearings it chooses to hold and prioritize appeals that involve the public interest, good planning principles and provincewide interest.The review also recommends a series of measures to improve the transparency of municipal board hearings, such as requiring the board to make all of its documents available to the public and to publish its orders and decisions electronically.An “action plan” made public by the province suggests some of these changes are on the way, some time next year.Manitoba’s municipal relations minister, however, rejects the idea his government is dragging its feet on changes to the board.”This isn’t kids’ stuff. When you’re untangling a mess of that degree, it’s going to take some time in the beginning,” Glen Simard said Wednesday in an interview.That may be true. But it doesn’t explain why it will take two years for the NDP government to ratchet back the powers of the municipal board when it took one week in August 2024 for the premier to kill a different aspect of the same Pallister-era legislation.ABOUT THE AUTHORBartley Kives joined CBC Manitoba in 2016. Prior to that, he spent three years at the Winnipeg Sun and then 18 at the Winnipeg Free Press, writing about politics, music, food and outdoor recreation. He’s the author of three books – two of them Canadian bestsellers – and the winner of a Canadian Screen Award for reporting.
NDP slow to cut Manitoba’s provincially imposed reins on the economic horse that pulls the social cart
