In the late 1990s issues such as providing Shoal Lake water and to nearby municipalities and allowing exurban housing growth beyond Winnipeg became more important. At the time Mayor Susan Thompson voiced the idea of a regional planning authority to mediate such issues. In June 1998 former Great West Life President Kevin Kavannagh was appointed by Premier Filmon to Chair the Capital Region Review Committee. The panel looked at land use planning and economic development. Mayor Susan Thompson and the Mayors and Reeves of 14 adjacent municipalities began to meet on a regular basis starting in October 1998. However, there was a change of government in September 1999 which made creating a regional planning authority take longer than originally foreseen. It was created to co-ordinate land use policy and economic development between the City of Winnipeg and the surrounding municipalities. It is the most densely populated and economically important area of Manitoba. Other communities with over 1,000 population in the region besides Winnipeg are the city ofSelkirk and towns of Oakbank, Oak Bluff, Stonewall, Stony Mountain, Teulon, Lorette and Niverville. An pro-economic growth planning document was released in November 2018 as Securing Our Future: An Action Plan for Winnipeg's Metropolitan Region. In October 2019, Dentons released a speech and discussion document, For the Benefit of All: Regional Competitiveness and Collaboration in the Winnipeg Metro Region, which seeks to reform regional planning. Upon publication, Premier Pallister and Mayor Bowman spoke in favour of creating a new entity to manage development and transportation in the Winnipeg Metro Region.
Membership
The Capital Region was originally defined in The Capital Region Partnership Act to include 16 municipalities. Since that time the Town of Niverville and the Village of Dunnottar have been incorporated into the Winnipeg Metropolitan Region. The Region comprises the following cities, towns and RMs:
The population of the Winnipeg Metro Region is greatly concentrated within the city of Winnipeg itself, which has 86.5% of the Region's population residing in less than 6% of its land area. On the provincial level, the city has 54.9% of the province's population, while the Region's share is 63.5%. However, there are some municipalities that are geographically entirely or largely within its territory that are not officially part of the Metro Region. These include the town of Teulon, the village of Garson, and the Indian reserve of Brokenhead Ojibway Nation. The Winnipeg Metro Region includes the smaller Winnipeg census metropolitan area with the exception of Brokenhead Ojibway Nation. The included CMA municipalities are:
