FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Victoria, BC, September 25, 2026. Livable CRD has corrected a processing error that caused the scorecard to show eight candidates’ answers to the questionnaire’s $10 million budget question as adding up to much less than $10 million. Each of those candidates allocated the full amount.
What went wrong
The question asks candidates to split $10 million in new annual funding across twelve areas, from housing and transit to community-based clinics. Most candidates entered full dollar amounts. Some wrote their answers in millions, for example “1.5” for $1,500,000. The script that publishes those answers treated every number as a dollar figure and dropped anything after the decimal point, so 1.5 became $1 and 0.75 became $0. The bars beside each amount were then sized from that smaller total, so the proportions were wrong as well.
A candidate brought the discrepancy to our attention. The script now recognizes answers written in millions and no longer drops decimals, and every affected answer has been republished in full.
Who was affected
The corrected answers now appear on these candidates’ pages:
- Rishi Sharma, Mayor, Saanich
- Robb Johnstone, Councillor, Esquimalt
- Katherine Strongwind, Councillor, Sooke
- Brian McHattie, Councillor, Sooke
- Jennifer Parlee, Councillor, Colwood
- David Grove, Councillor, Colwood
- Ron Mattson, Councillor, View Royal
- Susan Kim, Councillor, Victoria
For Brian McHattie and Susan Kim, the proportions were right but the dollar amounts were not: $3 was shown where $3,000,000 was meant. For the other six, both the amounts and the bars were wrong.
What did not change
The budget question is not graded. It helps voters understand a candidate’s priorities but does not count toward any letter grade, so no grade on the scorecard has changed.
We apologize to the candidates involved and to the voters who read their answers before the correction. Anyone who spots something on the scorecard that doesn’t match what a candidate submitted can contact us.
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