2022 Waterloo Municipal Election

Waterloo held its municipal election on October 24, 2022. Voters elected a mayor, a councillor in each of the city's seven wards, two members of Region of Waterloo council, the regional chair and school board trustees. The mayoralty was open: in February 2022, two-term mayor Dave Jaworsky announced that he would not seek a third term, saying he was announcing early so that potential successors had time to consider the role. "After eight years, I've left the house nice and clean and tidy," he said in September. Three ward councillors also did not run again: Angela Vieth in Ward 3, Jeff Henry in Ward 6 and Tenille Bonoguore in Ward 7.

Four candidates ran for mayor, 20 for the seven ward seats and 10 for the two regional council seats. None of the mayoral candidates had held elected office. 22,435 of the city's 82,557 eligible voters cast ballots, a turnout of 27.18%, down from 34.22% in 2018.

Mayoral Race

Dorothy McCabe was elected mayor with 9,543 votes, 43.53% of the 21,923 votes cast for mayor. Shannon Weber received 9,212 (42.02%), Rob Evans 2,474 (11.28%) and Kypp Saunders 694 (3.17%). McCabe finished 331 votes ahead of Weber. City Clerk Julie Scott certified the results on October 25. Weber had filed her nomination in May and was the only candidate for mayor until McCabe entered the race in mid-August, days before nominations closed on August 19.

The City's poll-by-poll results show the two leading candidates winning in different parts of the city. Weber carried five of the seven wards: Ward 1, Ward 2, Ward 3 (by 8 votes), Ward 4, her home ward, where she took 54.9% of the mayoral vote, and Ward 5. McCabe carried her home ward, Ward 6, with 49.6%, and the downtown ward, Ward 7, with 2,286 votes to Weber's 1,156 (57.7% to 29.2%). Outside Ward 7, Weber led by 799 votes; McCabe's lead of 1,130 in Ward 7 more than offset it. McCabe said her campaign had targeted Ward 7 to get out the vote: "It's like, fish where the fish are." Weber said: "We really focused across all of the wards." Neither Evans nor Saunders placed first outright in any of the city's 49 polls.

The Candidates

Dorothy McCabe, 53, had about 20 years' experience in municipal government, the public sector and government relations, and during the campaign was government relations manager to the mayor, council and corporate leadership of Milton. She had been chief of staff to a former mayor of Kitchener and to a former MPP for Kitchener Centre, and an executive at the KidsAbility agency. In the 2018 provincial election she ran for the Liberals in Waterloo and finished third; the New Democrat incumbent, Catherine Fife, held the seat. Her platform called for "A More Affordable and Livable City", "A Greener, More Sustainable City" and "A Big Idea City". She pledged, within her first 100 days, to work with a non-profit organization to build affordable, supportive or co-operative housing on land the city owns, keeping that land in public hands.

Shannon Weber, 44, taught business part-time at Conestoga College. She holds degrees from both Waterloo universities and had been director of community relations at Wilfrid Laurier University and executive director of the Downtown Kitchener BIA; the Ontario government had appointed her to the board of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. She had never sought elected office ("I don't have a political brand," she said), and chose not to run for council in her own ward partly to avoid challenging Diane Freeman. Her platform proposed a task force on affordable housing and smart growth, modernized zoning bylaws, a pilot fire pit program and traffic calming.

Rob Evans, 44, the Waterloo-born chief executive of a technology business he started, said he would lead with innovation. Kypp Saunders, 49, a restaurateur and the only candidate who rented his home, proposed cutting red tape and zoning restrictions so that developers could build higher, and free transit with service past midnight.

Campaign Issues

The Record reported that speed limits, housing and preserving green space dominated the campaign. On June 13, 2022, against public input, which favoured 40 km/h, and the advice of traffic planners, council had voted 5–3 to lower the speed limit on residential streets to 30 km/h, phased in by 2025. The lower limit would apply to more than 700 streets, 60% of the city's paved lanes. No mayoral candidate endorsed the decision. Weber called it "probably, other than housing, the biggest issue that I'm hearing folks are concerned about"; Evans called it "devoid of common sense"; Saunders said 30 km/h "does seem a little excessive"; McCabe said "We're going to have to look at it again" and that redesigning roads was a better way to spend money. Among councillors seeking re-election, Diane Freeman said she regretted voting for the reduction, Royce Bodaly said seven people had told him at the door they would not vote for him because he supported it, and Jen Vasic said traffic calming was "really the No. 1 issue that people talk to me about."

Housing ranked first among the concerns of voters who answered a CBC Kitchener-Waterloo survey. At a debate organized by downtown neighbourhood associations on October 19, all four mayoral candidates called housing affordability a top concern and pledged to protect green space, and none planned to use "strong mayor" powers if the province legislated them. They differed on campaign donations from people in the development industry: McCabe and Saunders said they had accepted none, while Weber said she had "not ruled out or barred any legal donations from individuals, including those individuals in the development industry." City taxes had risen by an average of almost 3.3% a year from 2015 to 2022; none of the candidates committed to raising or easing them.

Council

The four councillors who sought re-election all won, and newcomers took the three open seats, so that with the new mayor half of the eight-member council was new.

• Ward 1: Sandra Hanmer won a second term with 1,675 votes (57.0%) over Robert Parent, a retired teacher who had also run in 2018 (1,262).
• Ward 2: Royce Bodaly won a second term with 1,568 votes (66.6%). Khaled Berbash, an architect, received 703. Shaheen Mujahid, whose name stayed on the ballot after she ended her campaign for health reasons, received 85.
• Ward 3: Hans Roach, a Waterloo Catholic District School Board trustee who had worked for 30 years in the medical technology industry, won the open seat with 1,404 votes (55.5%) to 1,126 for Madelyn Steiss.
• Ward 4: Diane Freeman, first elected in 2006 and the council's most experienced member, won with 2,647 votes (84.2%), the largest share in any council race. Maryssa Barras received 300 and Obinna Obi 195.
• Ward 5: Jen Vasic won a second term with 2,194 votes (62.7%). Joe Brenner, who campaigned against the 30 km/h limit and to allow backyard fires, received 834, Blayr Hogg 306 and Bob (Obie) Oberholtzer 167.
• Ward 6: With Henry leaving, the ward elected a new councillor for the first time in more than a decade. In the closest council race, Mary Lou Roe, who chaired the Community Coalition on Refugee and Immigrant Concerns, won with 896 votes (32.2%), 97 more than Matthew Nicholas Schwarze (799). Jonathan Cassels received 607 and Karen Fischer 480.
• Ward 7: Bonoguore left after one term, saying she had never planned on the role being long term. Julie Wright, director of Partners for Action, a University of Waterloo research initiative on flood risk, and a co-founder of the Uptown North Neighbourhood Association, won with 3,041 votes (80.6%) to 730 for Bruce Polan.

Regional Council

Waterloo elects two members of Region of Waterloo council, and its mayor also sits on regional council. Sean Strickland, who had spent 19 of the previous 22 years on regional council, did not run again. Of the 10 candidates, Jim Erb, a funeral director who sat on Waterloo city council from 1980 to 1988 and was elected to regional council in 2018, was re-elected with 12,541 votes, 35.3% of the 35,528 votes cast (each voter could choose two). Chantal Huinink, a social justice advocate and author with master's degrees in divinity and social work from Wilfrid Laurier University, won the second seat with 4,655 (13.1%), ahead of Jim Bolger (3,456). Regional Chair Karen Redman was re-elected with 72.3% of the vote across the region; in Waterloo she received 16,309 votes (78.8%).

Voting and Turnout

Voters could vote in person, at advance polls from October 8 to 16 or on election day from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., or by mail if they had applied between July 22 and September 9. On election day, voters could use their neighbourhood polling station or any of six "supervote" locations open to every voter in the city, including sites at both universities. On September 28 the City announced that the voter cards it had mailed listed a supervote site or another city facility instead of each voter's neighbourhood polling station, and that replacement cards would be mailed the week of October 3.

3,981 people voted in advance, up from 2,540 in 2018, but overall turnout fell: 22,435 ballots from 82,557 eligible voters (27.18%), compared with 24,843 from 72,598 (34.22%) in 2018. The number of eligible voters rose by 9,959 while the number of ballots fell by 2,408. Ward 7 had the highest turnout, 36.38%, and Ward 6 the lowest, 23.08%; outside Ward 7, turnout was 25.8%. Across Waterloo Region, turnout was 25.34%, with 20.26% in Kitchener and 28.87% in Cambridge.