Municipal Government Overview

How is the Region of Waterloo structured?

The Region of Waterloo is a two-tier government. The upper tier is the Region of Waterloo. The lower tier consists of seven area municipalities: three cities (Cambridge, Kitchener, and Waterloo) and four townships (North Dumfries, Wellesley, Wilmot, and Woolwich).

The elected body that governs the upper-tier Region of Waterloo is called Regional Council. Its membership consists of:

The (provincially appointed) Regional Chair
The mayors of the seven area municipalities
Extra Regional Councillors allocated to each city. Kitchener gets four regional councillors. Cambridge and Waterloo get two each.

Each of the seven area municipalities has a mayor and a ward council, consisting of ward councillors. The number of ward councillors varies from municipality to municipality.

Not including school boards, voters will be able to cast votes for the following positions municipally:

the mayor of their area municipality
ward councillor(s)
(for residents of Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge) regional councillors

What do the different levels of government do?

The regional and area municipal governments each have their own responsibilities, and understanding who does what can get complicated.

For example, some roads (usually major and arterial roads) are designated as regional roads and are controlled by the Region, while other roads are controlled by the municipality. The Region links to a list of regional roads from their Roads and Transportation page.

The City of Kitchener publishes a breakdown of regional vs city reponsibilities.

Regional Responsibilities

Some of the more prominent roles the Region is responsible for include:

Police services
Ambulance services
Waste collection
Public health
Social Services
Housing
Child Care
Seniors’ Services
Transportation (Regional Roads, Signals, Grand River Transit & ION)
Library operations in the townships
Wastewater Treatment
Water Supply
The Waterloo Region Airport

City/Township Responsibilities

Some of the prominent roles played by the cities and townships include:

Fire services
Libraries in the cities, library facilities in the townships
Most parks & recreation services
Parking
Building Inspections and Permits
Animal Control
Local Roads & Sidewalks
Wastewater Collection
Water Distribution
Tax collection
Planning (this used to be a shared responsibility, but the provincial government changed this in the Bill 185, the 2024 Cutting Red Tape to Build More Homes Act)

Shared responsibilities

Several responsibilities are shared across levels of government. Some of these include:

Road maintenance (many major roads – the ones with numbers – are regional, and smaller roads are the responsibility of cities and townships).
Ambulance services (shared with region and the province)
Libraries in the townships (townships own the buildings, the Region operates library services)

Is the Regional Chair like the Premier or the Prime Minister of Waterloo Region?

Unlike provincial or federal politics, the Regional Chair does not set policy alone, and is not the leader of a party.

Under the Better Regional Governance Act, 2026, the appointed Regional Chair will have “strong chair” powers that allow them to override majority votes by Regional Council in some circumstances. For more information, see the following article: Ontario announces plan to slash Niagara Region, Simcoe County councils and add ‘strong chair’ powers

What about health care? Immigration?

In addition to municipal governments there is also a provincial (Ontario) government and a federal (Canadian) government. They have different responsibilities.

Here are some websites that break down the responsibilities across levels of government:

Which government is responsible: municipal, provincial or federal? published by the Open Council website.
The constitutional distribution of legislative powers published by the Government of Canada?

You will not be voting for provincial or federal representatives in this election.