Winnipeg must make budget process participatory and accountable

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People’s Climate Mandate Calls for action to ensure future budgets reflect approved policy

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Sept 11, 2026

It is often said that a city’s priorities are not found in its policies, they are found in its budget.

The City of Winnipeg has a plethora of adopted policies, plans and strategies that have been put together by work from residents, advocacy groups and experts. After being passed by Council, these plans and strategies are often unfunded and ignored at budget time, leaving the city unaccountable to the public and its own democratically developed public policy.

The city budget is a crucial step in decision-making for following through on plans and commitments and building a greener, equitable, healthy, liveable city. The People’s Climate Mandate recognizes the important role the budget process plays in ensuring what is budgeted will move us toward our goals.

“Winnipeg can learn a lot from Edmonton, who align their budget process with coherent and forward-looking public policy goals, not short term political moves. Many other cities who have adopted these budget measures are making progress that leaves Winnipeg behind,” said Marianne Cerilli with the Transportation and Land Use Coalition, one of the organizations behind the People’s Climate Mandate.

PEOPLE’S CLIMATE MANDATE

The PCM is a 10-point advocacy platform that represents how the next city council can take action to make our city more climate-friendly, green, liveable, and democratic. The platform was developed through:

A public townhall with almost 100 community members to brainstorm and evaluate solutions
An online public survey with 100+ responses
Conversations with organizations across the city to learn more about city context and discuss their priorities
A review of the city's plans and policies, as well as supporting background research. All PCM recommendations are grounded in the city's stated commitments, targets, and plans.

Read the full PCM here.

CALL TO ACTION

The People’s Climate Mandate identifies three calls to action the next mayor and council can take to make the city budget process more accountable and participatory:

A budget checklist (accountability): the city could adopt a “budget checklist,” which would demonstrate how the budget aligns with OurWinnipeg and the city’s other policies, and include clear goals and indicators that measure how the budget is actively moving us towards a healthy, green, equitable city.
A climate budget (accountability): many cities have been creating innovative measures for aligning their budgets with climate goals. Vancouver’s climate budget is one example, which is presented to councillors before the city’s annual budget and presents current climate investments and future needs.
Improve participation: the city should expand public participation in the next and all future multi-year budget process and annual budget updates, in alignment with the Engage Winnipeg Policy and recommendations made in the 2022 Governance Review.

Resources

Edmonton’s budget process, which explicitly grounds the budget in core city policy
City of Nanaimo’s Doughnut Economics framework
A climate budget has been recommended for the city by the Prairie Climate Centre
Cities including Montreal and Edmonton have even conducted participatory budgeting projects that offer the opportunity for residents to determine, through a democratic process, how a portion of the city budget is allocated.

More Details

“The city’s own polling shows a steady decline over the past few years in the proportion of respondents who say they feel like they can influence the direction the city is going, and who believe the city is accountable to the public. This is not only about abstract concepts of democracy–if the city wants to build the public buy-in it needs to keep raising property taxes, it needs to demonstrate accountability in how those taxes and fees are spent,” said Hannah Muhajarine, Campaigns Manager with Climate Reality Project Canada and coordinator for the People’s Climate Mandate coalition.

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