Preamble
The Manitoba Water Services Board (MWSB) has been oversubscribed with project requests from Municipalities’. Its annual budget is $24.0 million. With a 50% cost share, this results in delivering about $50 million in water and sewer infrastructure annually. MWSB develops a 5-year capital plan to initiate and schedule new projects. The process involves an evaluation and prioritization of projects using its internal Rating Criteria and the submission of this Capital Plan to the MWSB Board Members for approval. MWSB’s approved Capital Plan will then be submitted to the province for approval. This is a one-year process.
As of 2025, MWSB received 346 individual project applications from 103 municipalities and water cooperatives (excluding City of Winnipeg), the total estimated cost of all project applications is $1.35 billion; based upon its current annual capital budget of $24.0 Million MWSB is oversubscribed by a factor of 56X. Also, many rural municipalities generally do not have the expertise and staffing resources to manage their own government funding assisted water and wastewater projects and heavily rely on MWSB’s technical and financial staffing resources to act on a municipalities’ behalf. The intention is to lobby for an increase in MWSB staffing levels to support the budget increase, but the core premise is to increase MWSB’s annual capital budget from $24 million to $100 million.
The Ask
Based upon the recent theme from the September MAA meeting: “CHALLENGE. ACCEPTED”, a lobbying effort has been started to reach a target of at least 100 municipalities to sign on (by gaining adopted Council resolutions) before October 15, 2025, to lobby and influence the provincial government’s budget discussions and inform the appropriate departments and ministers of the collective need – and will – of Manitoba Municipalities. An overwhelming number of Council resolutions can’t be ignored.
Please accept the Challenge and utilize the Sample Resolution below and send the adopted Council Resolutions on your Municipal letterhead to: ac.re1759555690itrac1759555690fomr@1759555690ofni1759555690 where all resolutions that are received will then be collated and sent to the appropriate ministers and departments – with the assistance of the MMA.