How the coalition's candidate scorecard is built, in the coalition's own words. Each panel below opens onto one answer: when the election is and what is on the ballot, what the letter grades mean and how they are assigned, which organization writes and grades each topic, what every policy category covers, how a candidate gets added to the scorecard, and the dates the questionnaire runs to.
When is the 2026 municipal election?
General voting day across British Columbia is Saturday, October 17, 2026. Local elections are held province-wide on the third Saturday of October every four years, so every municipality in the Capital Regional District votes on the same day.
Advance voting days, voting places, and mail-in ballots are set by each municipality rather than by the province, and each one publishes its own. Every municipality's page on this site links to its election page for exactly that.
What is on the ballot
Each municipality elects a mayor and a council, and the size of the council varies:
- Saanich: 1 mayor and 8 councillors
- Victoria: 1 mayor and 8 councillors
- Esquimalt: 1 mayor and 6 councillors
- Oak Bay: 1 mayor and 6 councillors
- View Royal: 1 mayor and 6 councillors
- Colwood: 1 mayor and 6 councillors
- Langford: 1 mayor and 6 councillors
- Highlands: 1 mayor and 6 councillors
- Metchosin: 1 mayor and 4 councillors
- Central Saanich: 1 mayor and 6 councillors
- North Saanich: 1 mayor and 6 councillors
- Sidney: 1 mayor and 6 councillors
- Sooke: 1 mayor and 6 councillors
Voters also elect school trustees, and in the electoral areas and on the islands a regional director and Islands Trust trustees. Those races are outside the scope of this scorecard, which covers candidates for mayor and council.
How we grade: methodology
Livable CRD rates municipal election candidates on policy positions that shape how liveable the Capital Region is for everyone. Participating organizations are developing a shared questionnaire; responses and letter grades will be published before election day.
Note: We evaluate candidate positions, not municipal bylaws or past council votes. The topics below match the categories used in our coalition questionnaire.
Letter grades
- A Excellent
- Strong alignment with coalition standards across the topics we evaluate. Positions consistently support a more livable, inclusive Capital Region.
- B Good
- Mostly meets coalition standards. Some gaps remain, but the candidate generally supports progress on the questionnaire topics.
- C Mixed
- Minimally meets standards or has significant inconsistencies. Some positive positions, but notable shortcomings in one or more topic areas.
- C- Weak
- Falls short of coalition standards more often than it meets them. A few positions point the right way, but not enough of them to add up to progress.
- F Poor
- Fails to meet coalition standards. Positions would stall or roll back progress on livability across the region.
Some ratings may use modifiers (for example, Cā) when a candidate's positions fall between two levels.
When there is no letter
- Submitted, Grading In-Progress
- This candidate returned the questionnaire and this topic has not been published yet. Grading is done by the coalition organization that wrote the topic's questions, and nothing it finishes goes on the scorecard early: every topic, including the two we do not grade (General and Healthcare access), is published on September 22, when the responses and grades are released together. It says nothing about how the topic is going.
- Answered
- The candidate answered, this is a topic we do not assign a letter in, and their answers are published. Two topics work this way: General, which asks what a candidate would change and how they would split a budget, and Healthcare access, which asks one question about primary care clinics. The coalition puts them to every candidate because the answers are worth reading, not because we score them. A candidate who returned the questionnaire after the grading deadline shows this mark on every topic: their answers are published, but not graded. Open the candidate's page to read what they wrote.
- Declined to take part
- This candidate told the coalition they were not taking part, so the topics they were asked about carry this mark rather than a letter, and their page carries what they said, if they gave a statement, instead of grades. One kind of grade outlives it: where a sitting councillor's housing record has been scored from their council votes, that letter still stands, because it is a reading of what they have already done in office rather than an answer they chose to give us. Like a dash, the mark itself is not a bad grade: it is not a grade at all.
- ā No Response
- No completed questionnaire came back from this candidate, and they did not tell us why, so there is nothing to publish in any topic. A candidate who has replied carries an hourglass or a speech bubble instead. A dash is never a bad grade: the grades are A through F, and a candidate who scores poorly gets a letter saying so.
Questionnaire topics
Each candidate is graded in every policy area, including a general category for cross-cutting items. See what each category covers for a description of every topic.
How grades are assigned
Each participating group contributes the questions in its area of focus, and that same group grades candidates' responses to the questions it submitted. Every question and its weighting is published on the questionnaire page, and every candidate's per-question result is published on their own page.
- Most topics are graded question by question. Each question carries a letter grade and a stated share of its topic, and the topic grade is the weighted average of them.
- Housing is graded differently, on Homes for Living's own rubric: each question is worth a set number of points, and the topic grade is the share of the points available that a candidate earned — 85% or better is an A, 70% a B, 60% a C, 50% a C‑, and anything below that an F.
- How many points are available depends on where someone is running. Several housing questions are asked only in the municipalities they are about, so a candidate is always scored against the questions they were actually asked.
- Arts and culture is graded on Victori'us' own rubric, which scores each answer from 0 to 3 rather than lettering it. The questions still carry the stated shares of the topic published beside them, and the topic grade is the weighted average of those scores — 86% or better is an A, 70% a B, 60% a C, and anything below that an F.
- Points are awarded for positions that advance coalition goals, and deducted for positions that would clearly undermine progress on housing, mobility, climate, healthcare access, or other priorities covered in the survey.
Candidates will have an opportunity to review their published responses before grades are finalized, consistent with fair voter-information practices.
Responses are published as written. The one exception is set out in our questionnaire code of conduct: hateful, harassing, or threatening content is neither graded nor published. Disagreeing with the coalition is not covered by that: a low grade and a conduct decision are separate things, decided separately.
Who writes, and grades, the questions?
Livable CRD is a coalition, and the questionnaire is built collaboratively. Each participating organization contributes the questions in its own area of focus: a transit group writes the transit questions, a housing group writes the housing questions, and so on across the policy areas we evaluate.
The same group that submits a set of questions also grades candidates' responses to those questions. Each group grades only within its own area of focus, so no single organization assigns a candidate's full slate of grades alone. This keeps every topic in the hands of the people who understand it best, and keeps the overall scorecard a shared, coalition-wide effort.
All grading follows our published methodology so the process stays transparent and reproducible. Candidates will have an opportunity to review their published responses before grades are finalized.
What each category covers
Every candidate is graded across the policy areas below, the same categories used in the coalition questionnaire. Here's what each one means.
- General
- Cross-cutting questions that apply across topics or address overall vision for livability in the Capital Region.
- Healthcare access
- Access to clinics, mental health supports, and municipal actions that help residents get timely care close to home.
- Transit
- Public transit service, funding, and integration so more people can get around without driving for every trip.
- Housing
- Affordable and diverse homes, gentle density, tenant protections, and land-use choices that help people of all incomes live here.
- Climate
- Climate action, emissions reduction, resilience, and aligning growth with a sustainable future.
- Arts
- Creative spaces, cultural programming, and municipal support for arts and culture in everyday community life.
- Rolling & cycling
- Safe bike lanes, rolling infrastructure, and policies that make cycling and wheeled mobility practical for more residents.
- Walking
- Walkable neighbourhoods, sidewalks, crossings, and street design that put people first on foot.
- Governance
- Open and accountable local government: transparent decision-making, meaningful public consultation, and council processes residents can follow and trust.
How candidates get added to the scorecard
Our volunteers maintain a working spreadsheet of everyone running for municipal office across the Capital Regional District. A candidate's entry starts out internal to that sheet, and is marked confirmed only once they have publicly announced their candidacy. The scorecard is generated from the confirmed entries, so a name appears there after that public announcement, not before.
Every candidate is included in the Livable CRD project. We do not pick and choose who appears. Once confirmed, every candidate is added to this scorecard and every candidate is sent the coalition questionnaire, regardless of their platform, party affiliation, or whether we expect them to agree with us.
If someone is missing, the most likely explanation is simply that we haven't updated their status on our back end yet. Tracking every announcement across thirteen municipalities and three electoral areas is volunteer work, and announcements do not arrive in a tidy list, so gaps happen.
We genuinely welcome comments and suggestions from the public. If you know of a candidate we've missed, spot an error in an existing entry, or have a correction of any kind, email us at [email protected]. Public help is a real part of how this list stays accurate.
Key dates, and what a missed deadline means
The grades on the scorecard come from the coalition questionnaire, which goes to every confirmed candidate. Only one date below is one a candidate can miss, and it carries its own heading underneath; the others are the coalition milestones leading up to it and the publication date that follows it, listed so the whole schedule is public. The same schedule runs as a timeline on the homepage.
- Partner organizations submit questionsEach participating organization writes and submits the questions for its own policy area.Passed
- Draft questionnaires ready for coalition reviewThe submitted questions are assembled into draft questionnaires and circulated to the whole coalition for review.Passed
- Final questionnaires ready to send to candidatesReview closes and the question set is locked, ready to go out to every confirmed candidate.Passed
- Candidates respond, and the coalition gradesThrough The questionnaire is open. Candidates return it as they are ready, and each partner organization grades the answers to the questions it wrote. None of it reaches the scorecard while this runs: every response and every grade is held until the release date below.Passed
- Candidate deadline to be graded and publishedThe last day a candidate can return the questionnaire and still be graded. One cut-off covers everything: results published on this website, and printed scorecards, stickers, posters, and other physical materials.Passed
- Responses and grades published on the scorecardEvery candidate's responses and grades go live on the scorecard together, organized by municipality, in time for voters to read them before election day. Nothing is published before this date.Passed
What the deadline covers
September 18 is the last day a candidate can return the questionnaire and still be graded. One date covers everything we produce: the grades on this website, and the printed scorecards, stickers, and posters.
Until then the questionnaire is open and grading runs alongside it, but none of it reaches the scorecard while that happens. Every response and every grade is published together on September 22: a candidate who returns the questionnaire early is graded early, and goes live the same day as everyone else.
What happens to a candidate who does not respond
A missed deadline never removes anyone from the scorecard. Every confirmed candidate stays listed with their row intact; their topic grades simply stay pending. We do not treat silence as a failing grade, and we do not drop the candidate from the list. See how candidates get added for why the list itself is not selective.
If you are a candidate and the questionnaire has not reached you, or you want to confirm your response was received, email us at [email protected].