Beausejour eyes ‘big jump’ in size with land annexation proposal

Storefronts line Park Avenue in Beausejour, Man. in this 2025 file image. The town northeast of Winnipeg is proposing to annex land from the adjacent Rural Municipality of Brokenhead amid a shortage of developable land. (Jeff Keele/CTV News Winnipeg)

The Town of Beausejour is putting forward a proposal to annex land from its adjacent rural municipality that would more than double the town’s current footprint, with the mayor citing a shortage of developable land and the need for long-term planning.

Mayor Ray Schirle said the town, which currently spans 4.66 square kilometres, hasn’t undergone an annexation process in nearly three decades—describing it as long overdue.

“Right now, we’re out of developable land pretty much in Beausejour,” said Schirle, who has served as mayor of the town northeast of Winnipeg since 2018. “It should have been done a long time ago.”

The proposal would add 4.85 square kilometres from the Rural Municipality of Brokenhead, with boundaries following existing mile roads and expanding west to Mile 40 Road. Schirle noted the “big jump” in size increase is largely due to farmland parcels surrounding the community that the town also intends to bring within its boundaries.

Schirle said the annexation would improve boundary alignment, streamlining servicing, and future planning and development across the expanded area—noting that several properties within the proposed zone already rely on town water and sewer services. He pointed to a new water treatment plant, completed roughly a year and a half ago and designed with future expansion capacity in mind, as a key enabler of the town’s growth ambitions.

“We are growing as a community,” Schirle said. “This is planning down the road for the next 50 years—this is not going to happen in one year.”

Schirle said the town already has a memorandum of understanding signed with the RM of Brokenhead but emphasized the proposal still requires consultation. In total, he said 84 properties and 50 individual property owners in the RM would be affected.

Under Manitoba’s Municipal Act, the annexation must clear a multi-step process before taking effect, involving public consultation and filing a report with the Municipal Board—a quasi-judicial tribunal that reviews boundary change applications and makes recommendations to the minister of municipal relations.

The first open house on the proposal is slated for June 16 in the town. Schirle said feedback will be carefully reviewed and that he welcomes questions from residents.

“We might have some people against it,” he said. “It’s not just flipping a switch and making a deal with the RM. There is a big process here that we have to go through to do our due diligence, and the Town of Beausejour and the RM are going to go through that whole process.”

If the annexation proceeds, Schirle said most affected residents would pay rates “very similar” to what they currently pay.

Future developers taking on properties within the expanded boundaries would be responsible for the costs of extending services—not existing town ratepayers, he said. The RM of Brokenhead would also retain a tax levy for the next decade, ensuring the transition does not become a burden on its ratepayers.

Schirle said constituents have asked about additional grocery options and retail expansion—but noted that when it comes to attracting major chains, population numbers and the economics of operation are what drive decisions.

“It’s all about numbers when it comes to these things—to be able to sustain that, and also your cost of operation,” he said.

Schirle said the annexation process could take one to a few years to finalize, depending on the pace of proceedings and the level of opposition.

A review of census data over the past two decades shows Beausejour’s population has consistently trended upward, reaching just over 3,300 residents in the 2021 census — up 2.7 per cent from 2016.