City’s online council voting results page unchanged since January

A City of Winnipeg web page that shows how the mayor and councillors voted during council meetings wasn’t updated for the better part of 2025, and it appears few people noticed.

The page’s most recent entry was a January council meeting, leaving a 10-month gap, when the Free Press inquired Monday about the lack of updates and if the city had stopped posting records on the voting information system page.

“There was an issue that was preventing new records from being added to Open Data,” city spokesman Kalen Qually wrote in an email to the Free Press, referring to an online dashboard that displays various information and figures from municipal departments.

“After looking into it (Monday) morning, we can confirm the issue has been resolved and updated meeting records now appear on the voting information system.”

The city wouldn’t disclose what the issue was, or if staff were aware that the page wasn’t being updated prior to the Free Press inquiry.

Voting records for council meetings up to the end of September were displayed as of Tuesday, following the update. Qually said records of meetings from October onwards will be completed at the end of the year.

There remains a big gap for executive policy committee vote results, however. The most recent EPC meeting for which vote outcomes were available on the voting information web page as of Tuesday was March 2023. EPC is the mayor’s inner circle.

The system is intended to be a more convenient and easily navigable way for people to find vote results, rather than scrolling through published minutes or skipping through a video recording.

People can look up a council member’s voting record over the last two terms, or search for results by meeting date or by using key words, such as a street name or city department. It is unclear how many internet users visit the web page per year.

Alternatively, more up-to-date formal records of all meetings, including minutes and transcripts, are published on a separate section of the city’s website. Meetings are livestreamed online, with recordings available to watch afterward.

The city began posting the results of EPC votes in September 2020 and council meeting votes a few months later, when it moved to a computer voting information system, or VIS.

Then-mayor Brian Bowman hailed it as a “significant step forward” for transparency and accountability at city hall.

Scott Gillingham, Winnipeg’s mayor since November 2022, said he doesn’t know the reason for the delay in vote results being posted on the VIS web page. The service was introduced when he was the councillor for St. James.

“It’s important where possible to post the information. Whether it gets posted immediately or as up to date as it should be, that’s something we could look into,” he said. “I maintain that municipalities and the City of Winnipeg are the most open level of government of any level of government. We’ve got a lot of transparency in the system already.”

Coun. Sherri Rollins, who resigned from EPC in January, said she has concerns about transparency and disclosure this term, after Bowman had a “very deliberate” plan regarding transparency and open data.

“We need to pick up our game because it erodes so quickly without someone driving disclosure and open government,” Rollins (Fort Rouge-East Fort Garry) wrote in an email.

“Transparency promotes accountability. The basics of that accountability is how your elected representative voted on an issue. The public, including council, should be informed when that isn’t working and when it’s restored.”

St. Vital Coun. Brian Mayes said he doesn’t visit the web page and uses other sources, such as meeting minutes, to find out how council members voted on certain issues, when required.

“I think it still serves a purpose,” he said of the VIS web page. “We should be letting the public know who voted which way. We’ve got to have some archive.”

Duff Conacher, co-founder of Ottawa-based Democracy Watch, said the city should explain why VIS records weren’t kept up to date on its website.

“Voters have a right to know that,” he said. “It’s important for voters to have access to information on a timely basis in order to evaluate how their representative is representing them.”

— With files from Joyanne Pursaga

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca