ManitobaA provincial appeals body granted the power to overturn land-use decisions by cities, towns and rural municipalities in Manitoba is making inconsistent decisions, taking too long to make them and sometimes doesn’t even inform people where its hearings take place, a new report to the province concluded.Review stops short of ratcheting back expanded powers granted by PCs to provincial bodyBartley Kives · CBC News · Posted: Oct 30, 2025 6:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 5 hours agoListen to this articleEstimated 4 minutesThe City of Winnipeg is among municipalities that raised objections about the municipal board. A new review recommends ways to improve it. (Jaison Empson/CBC)A provincial appeals body granted the power to overturn land-use decisions by cities, towns and rural municipalities in Manitoba is making inconsistent decisions, taking too long to make them and sometimes doesn’t even inform people where its hearings are taking place, a new report to the province concluded.A long-awaited review of Brian Pallister-era changes to legislation that governs municipal planning recommends a series of improvements to the municipal board.In 2021, Pallister’s Progressive Conservative government expanded the powers of the municipal board to give provincial appointees the ability to flip decisions made by elected municipal councils.Mayors, reeves and councillors across the province have complained to the province ever since. Now a review of the legislation that expanded the municipal board’s powers partly vindicates those objections — but stops of short of entirely ratcheting back the board’s new powers.The review was completed in December 2024 by consulting firm Braid Solutions but was only made public by the NDP government on Tuesday.After conducting more than 250 interviews with officials in 95 Manitoba municipalities, Braid president Ian Shaw found “all stakeholders” believe “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.”Shaw’s review recommended 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 the board becomes 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.The review does not recommend rescinding the municipal board’s power to reconsider decisions made by elected officials.“There are strong arguments within a Manitoba context for the appeal function to be retained at a provincial level,” Shaw concluded. Misinformation, populism imperilled regional planningThe review also made recommendations in other areas, such as the creation of new regional planning frameworks. The NDP government effectively killed a Winnipeg-area planning framework called Plan 20-50 in 2024 by allowing municipalities to withdraw from it.The review acknowledged the role the rise of misinformation and uncivil discourse played in making municipalities less interested in regional plans.“All municipal governments in Canada, and in many other countries, are experiencing an increased activity and interest in community planning and development processes. This includes participation by individuals and groups that have developed positions based on misinformation and broad populist theories being advanced through social media,” Shaw wrote in the review.“In many cases, these stakeholders have taken extreme positions on issues ranging from land use to density to transportation planning.”The positions escalated into “verbal threats of violence against many elected representatives, administration officials and the public service” at council meetings when Plan 20-50 was being considered, Shaw wrote.The consultant found municipal officials did not contemplate this level of hostility and said their experiences “shaped their perspective on the implications for overall municipal governance.”Government accepts recommendationsIn a statement issued Tuesday, Manitoba Municipal and Northern Relations Minister Glen Simard said he accepted all of the Braid review’s recommendations.Simard did not make himself available for an interview.Kathy Valentino, a Thompson city councillor who serves as the president of the Association of Manitoba Municipalities, said she is pleased with Shaw’s report.“It sends the message municipalities know their communities best,” she said in an interview from Ottawa. 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.
Long-awaited review of Pallister-era planning legislation recommends improvements to Manitoba municipal board
