The 17 municipalities of the Winnipeg Metropolitan Region completed a detailed action plan in 2017 to advance common objectives together. Many of their priorities have seen strong progress, but tackling some of the bigger projects was always limited by the WMRs capacity to move budget or generate new funds for research, seed money or pilot projects that would benefit all. Driven by the desire to create a pool of resources they could draw upon for projects like these, they sought revenue streams in many places. After much research it was determined that coordinated, collective procurement could provide better value for taxpayer dollars on purchases today, and could be a pooled source of revenue to build shared capacity, which would result in further savings, and ultimately to pool resources toward projects and programs on the ground.
With insights from other jurisdictions, legal counsel, Economic Development expertise, and the help of a highly respected business advisory council, the structure of JohnQ was outlined. The next critical step was to secure, at least, the benefit of the doubt from key stakeholders in the process, elected officials in each municipality, administrators and staff and business leaders.