Candidate scorecard for a capital region that agrees with us
Livable CRD is a coalition of community groups preparing a transparent scorecard for municipal election candidates across the Capital Regional District, so that voters can see where candidates stand on the issues our member organizations have already worked out the right answer to.
What we are building
Municipal councils shape transit, housing, climate, arts, streets safe for walking and cycling, healthcare access, and more. This scorecard surveys candidates, publishes what they send back, and rates them on a clear letter-grade system. Each organization in the coalition writes the questions for its own policy area. It then marks the answers to those questions. Every reply is therefore assessed by the group with the firmest possible opinion about what the reply should have said, which we consider a strength.
Grades are assigned by experts. They are experts because they are the ones assigning the grades. We do not publish their names. Naming them would invite the public to weigh their expertise against their conclusions, and that is not what a scorecard is for. Two local outlets have described them as experts and we were grateful for the confirmation.
We evaluate candidate positions. Not municipal bylaws, and not past council votes.
Nine incumbents are running again. Under this rule their four-year record of actual decisions never comes up, because we do not open it. A questionnaire answer written in September is more recent, more optimistic, and much easier to give an A to. A vote from 2023 just sits there being a vote.
Project timeline
Where the scorecard sits in its schedule, from drafting through to the last day a candidate can respond.
Questions submitted
Each group writes the questions for its own area, knowing it will also be marking them.
Coalition announces itself
Assembled out of groups that ran a candidate survey last election under a different name. The name is new. The questions are the ones we had.
Questionnaire ready
66 questions, 9 policy areas, 54 of them graded. The other 12 go out unscored because the answers inform our work. We wanted to know.
Responses and grading
Candidates reply. Each group marks its own questions. Nobody outside the coalition sees a grade before it goes up.
In progressFinal cut-off
Last day to be graded, here and on anything printed.
Candidate deadlineFrequently anticipated questions
Questions we expect, answered here so nobody has to ask them out loud.
Do you take money from developers?
No.
Our policy prohibits it. We also publish contributions of $99 or less anonymously, which means that if a developer did give, we would not know, you would not know, and the policy would remain unbroken in the only sense anyone can check.
We are able to answer this question with total confidence for that reason.
Who writes the housing questions?
Our housing member writes them. Our housing member also marks them.
Its last election filing listed 59 donors. Four gave their names.
We have never asked the other 55 what they do for a living. It has not come up.
Who assigns the grades?
Experts.
We would rather not narrow it down. Narrowing it down is how you end up with somebody checking whether the person marking housing runs a housing campaign.
One name is public, our authorized principal official, because Elections BC requires a name. They did not specify whose.
Is the scorecard non-partisan?
Explicitly.
Homes for Living and Greater Victoria Acting Together both run their own campaigns to change what council decides, and both are coalition members. We also send visitors to Dogwood's voting pledge. None of the three is a registered political party.
We checked the word. We did not check the arrangement.
What does an A mean?
Strong alignment with coalition standards.
We set the standards. We write the questions that test them. We mark the answers against them.
An A means the candidate agrees with us, which we have graded as excellent.
Why not grade council votes?
Votes are historical.
In 2023 five councillors voted to stop residents filing conduct complaints against their own councillor. In 2024 the same council voted itself a 25% raise, effective immediately, after being advised to defer it to the next term. Grading either now would not change them.
An answer written in September can still be improved.
Shouldn't someone grade the UDI membership?
Until March 2026 the City of Victoria held a paid corporate membership in the Urban Development Institute, the lobby for the development and real estate industry. It ran for over a decade at $2,625 a year. Council ended it 8 to 1.
That is the clearest case in this election of the development industry sitting inside a public institution, and it is a matter of public record.
It is also a council vote, so it falls outside what we grade.
What would make you publish more?
Three things. The names of the people assigning each grade. The number and value of contributions received under $99. The voting record of the nine incumbents we are grading.
All three are available to us today.
Coalition partners
Fourteen organizations. Each writes and marks its own policy area. Each was chosen by the other thirteen.
The joke here is aimed at a structure, not at fourteen sets of volunteers. Two of the partners are a fiscal restraint watchdog and a police budget campaign, which makes short work of any claim that this coalition fronts for the property industry. It does not. What it does is smaller and harder to answer. A group of people who each want particular things are marking candidates on whether those things were agreed to, then publishing the result in the format of a school report card.