Coalition partners
A joint project between organizers and advocates across the region. Most are small, most are volunteer run, and most are exactly what they say they are. The trouble starts with each one writing the questions for its own area and then marking the answers.
The full roster
Walk On Victoria, Better Island Transit, Climate Justice Victoria, Family Doctors for Saanich, Victori'us Arts, Better Transit YYJ, Homes for Living, Better Columbia, Greater Victoria Acting Together, Strong Towns Victoria, Common Horizon Victoria, Resilient Urban Systems and Habitat, Grumpy Taxpayer$ of Greater Victoria, and Defund VicPD.
Two of them, Homes for Living and Greater Victoria Acting Together, run their own campaigns to change what council decides while sitting inside the body grading the candidates. Our view: the scorecard is not written at arm's length from the campaigns it grades, whatever anyone intends by it.
Homes for Living
Presses for maximum supply. Its 2022 Elections BC filing recorded 59 donors: 4 named, 55 anonymous. Candidates it supported in 2022 went on to form majorities on three councils in this region. It is not on the 2026 register in its own name, and does not need to be, because the coalition it joined is registered.
Greater Victoria Acting Together
An affiliate of a community organizing network registered in Washington State. Its own site says that during the 2022 municipal election it held an assembly and gained the commitment of candidates to meet with it annually on its housing targets. That is organised political work, and voters should know it is there.
Grumpy Taxpayer$ of Greater Victoria
The clearest reason the developer front theory does not hold. Anyone claiming all fourteen partners are a property industry operation has to explain this one, and cannot.
Defund VicPD
Whatever you think of the position, it is not a development industry position. Its presence is the second reason we declined to run that argument, and the reason we think anyone running it is handing the coalition an easy rebuttal.
Walk On Victoria
Sidewalks and crossings are genuinely municipal, genuinely decided at council, and genuinely answerable in a questionnaire. This is the partner whose category we graded a B, and the proof the rest could have been built the same way.
Family Doctors for Saanich
The primary care shortage here is real and serious. Almost none of it is decided by a municipal council.
To be fair to them
Coalitions are legitimate and advocacy groups are supposed to advocate. Getting candidates on the record is a public good. This questionnaire runs to 66 questions, which is more work than most organisations would put in, and twelve of them go out with no grade attached. That last part is honest and worth saying.
The objection is about presentation. A letter grade looks like something an examiner measured. What it actually records is the distance between a candidate and the advocacy group that set the question. A voter reading a report card is not told which one they are getting.