Updates
What has changed on this site and what is new in the election, dated. This page is the freshness record: a glance tells you whether the site is still being maintained. It also holds the corrections log — every published error, what it said, and what it says now.
| Date | What changed |
|---|---|
| October 7, 2026 | What the candidates have said: 272 more passages, 931 in all A second reading of every campaign website and the news since September 11, plus seventeen BarrieToday articles and candidate profiles, adds 272 reviewed passages, each copied word for word from an archived copy of its source. Four candidates are quoted for the first time: Samina Alim (Ward 8), William Cadeau (Ward 10), Patrick Harriott-Stewart (Ward 4) and Eric Lapointe (Viamonde); 55 of the 60 now are. The mayoral candidates' answers on data centres appear on the new data centres page. 41 drafted passages were rejected in review, including every line from one outlet's candidate round-up whose opening was copied from this site. |
| October 7, 2026 | From BarrieToday pastes: the development-charge cut, red-light penalties, the encampment lawsuit, and the CARP debate The housing page now records council's September 16 cut to residential development charges and the $129 million that followed; speed cameras notes the by-law that readies administrative penalties for red-light cameras; and the encampments lawsuit is dated to its June 30 filing. BarrieToday's report on the October 6 CARP debate and seven other articles are archived, with new candidate passages awaiting review. The mayoral register adds MD015-26, the mayor's approval of the by-laws passed September 16. |
| October 7, 2026 | New issue page: data centres Raised at the October 6 mayoral debate as a moratorium question, data centres now have their own page: the facilities already operating in Barrie, the zoning that already permits them, the provincial rule that decides grid connections, the regional planners' forecast that Barrie TS passes its rating around 2031, water and Lake Simcoe, and what an interim control by-law, the legal form of a moratorium, can and cannot do. Council minutes since 2013 mention a data centre once. |
| October 7, 2026 | Voter Assistance Centres: six, all on the same hours; Saturday is 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The City's voter information page lists six centres, including the Surface Water Treatment Plant added after the Ward 10 letter error, all open October 22 and 23 (10 a.m. to 8 p.m.), Saturday October 24 (10 a.m. to 6 p.m.) and October 26 (10 a.m. to 8 p.m.). The site had given Saturday as 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., as the Clerk's procedures document prints it; in person and key dates now follow the City's current page. |
| October 7, 2026 | Third-party advertisers, election-sign rules, the October 13 PIN date, and when the strong-mayor limits would apply Campaign finance lists the three registered third-party advertisers for 2026 (names and registration times; registration closes October 23). Key dates adds the election-sign window from the City's sign by-law (up from September 26, down by October 30), the sign rules themselves, the October 13 date after which a missing voter letter means contacting the City, and November 15, when the new council takes office. How to vote now points to the City's own voter lookup portal. Strong mayor powers sets out, from the regulation's text, when the election-year limit on the outgoing mayor would take effect in Barrie, and who the deputy mayor is. |
| October 7, 2026 | Students, permanent residents and the new council's start date answered; links to the school boards' own election pages How to vote now answers two questions it did not: students can vote both in Barrie and at home (the Municipal Elections Act gives a student two residences, s. 2(2.1)), and permanent residents cannot vote (s. 17(2)(b)). The incumbents page and each board page give the date the new council and trustees take office: November 15, 2026 (s. 6(1)). The school board pages link to each board's own 2026 election material and trustee maps, where the board publishes them. The mayor and ward pages now open by naming every candidate in the race. |
| October 7, 2026 | Issue pages re-checked: encampments, winter maintenance, libraries, schools, permits Encampments: the mayor's October 1 statement that no encampments remain on City land, the 221 "addressed" figure in news reports, and the lawsuit seeking to halt evictions, each sourced to the reporting. Winter maintenance: the two June 2026 motions are now confirmed from the minutes; the operational review due in August had not reached General Committee as of today. The Letitia Heights library branch has not opened and has no firm date; no teacher recalls and no Bayfield bridge construction start were found reported; the City's building-permit data is current but too thin for a yearly series. |
| October 7, 2026 | Ward 10 voter letters reissued; a sixth assistance centre; two candidates' events held; 84 stories indexed The City reprinted the voter information letters for Ward 10 after the first batch carried the wrong ward number; the original PINs no longer work, and only the updated letter (yellow address panel) does. A sixth Voter Assistance Centre, at the Surface Water Treatment Plant, was added for the voting period. A page of its own explains what happened and what Ward 10 voters need to do, and a badge on every voting page and the Ward 10 race page links to it. The debates page now lists CARP Barrie's October 6 mayoral debate and the October 5 meet-and-greet at Traditions Banquet Hall, both held. The media index adds 84 stories published September 9 to October 7. |
| October 7, 2026 | No candidate questionnaire this cycle; pages now follow the voting calendar on their own The page held in reserve for a candidate questionnaire has been retired: no questionnaire was sent in 2026, and the race pages no longer promise answers. What candidates have said appears as verbatim passages from their own sites and the news, under the rules on the methodology page. The home page, key dates and debates pages now change on their own when voting opens on October 16 and closes on October 26, so no countdown is left reading zero, and a candidates' event moves to the past list the day after it happens. |
| September 15, 2026 | Findability: real last-changed dates, question-form titles and headings, a related-issues block, and the mayoral register as its own page Every page now carries the date its content last changed, taken from the site's own change history rather than the day the sitemap was built, both in its footer and in the sitemap search engines read. Fifteen issue-page titles and about fifty section headings were rewritten as the question they answer, so a search for that question lands on the section that answers it. Each issue page ends with a hand-picked set of related issues; each race page lists the issues its candidates have spoken to; and the "record shows" links now land on the exact section. The strong-mayor register has its own page, mayoral directions, with the issue page keeping the summary. Candidates' events are marked up for search engines as events. |
| September 15, 2026 | After an external review: three corrections, seven vote titles, "the record shows" links, and more An outside reader went through every issue page and the data pages on September 12. Three published errors are now in the corrections log. Seven recorded votes whose item titles the minutes parser had missed, including the two 2026 divisions, now carry titles read from the minutes. Candidate passages that state a figure this site already publishes now print that figure beneath them, under a stated rule (methodology); twelve passages carry one so far. The campaign-finance tables note the two 2022 contributions the Compliance Audit Committee examined, and any single contribution above the $1,200 limit is flagged. The strong-mayor page now lists all 90 entries on the City's register under a stated classification rule, with the 89 signed documents archived and each non-routine one summarised from its text; three directions act notwithstanding a council motion, and the 0% operating-budget target turns out to be the mayor's own written direction. Also: the libraries page names the two votes against the June 2024 capital restriction; major investments notes the downtown stadium's absence from the capital plan; council pay opens with a one-paragraph summary of the record; encampments carries a dated weekly block; the About page says more about how the research is done and what happens after October 26; and Ann-Marie Kungl's profile URL now matches the canonical spelling of her name (the old address redirects). |
| September 15, 2026 | Campaign finance: the two 2022 mayoral contributor lists, 176 named donors Alex Nuttall and Barry Ward filed their 2022 contributor lists as separate schedules stapled to the standard form rather than in the form's own table, so the earlier itemization pass, which read only the form, left both blank. The attached schedules have now been read line by line: 85 named contributors over $100 for Nuttall ($94,246.84 received, $1,075 returned) and 91 for Ward ($55,226 received, $2,400 returned), each list summing to the penny to the totals the candidate reported on the form. Where a contribution was partly returned, the amount shown is what the campaign kept, with the gross and returned figures noted beside it. They appear on the campaign finance page under each candidate's row and now count in the contributor charts. |
| September 11, 2026 | What the candidates have said: second batch, 659 passages, 51 candidates Thirty-six BarrieToday election articles that our tools could not reach were archived from the pages themselves: the candidate profiles the outlet has been running since late August, the three mayoral question-and-answer pieces on top issues, homelessness and addiction, and project costs, and the nomination-close report. Seven campaign websites that had not answered our fetches were read the same way (Amy Courser, Donald Blais, Gary Harvey, Arif Khan, Sergio Morales, Pauline Stevenson, Dave Weingarten). The result is 234 further verbatim passages, every one proven word for word against its archive, taking the total to 659 passages from 51 candidates. Where a one-line feed summary stood in for an article, the full article now backs it. Every candidate in every race was read the same way. |
| September 11, 2026 | Candidate statements now fold: two passages open, the rest a click away On every issue page and every 2026 candidate profile, a candidate with more than two passages on one issue now shows the first two with the rest behind a "Show N more passages" control. Nothing is removed: every passage is still on the page, still verbatim and sourced, and a link into a folded passage opens it. This keeps the mayoral candidates, who have the most on record, from pushing the rest of a race off the screen. |
| September 11, 2026 | What the candidates have said: first batch, 425 passages, 48 candidates The first research batch is published on every issue page and every 2026 candidate profile: 425 verbatim passages from 48 candidates, drawn from 24 campaign websites archived September 10–11 and 107 news items, each linked to its source and dated, and each proven word for word against the archived copy before publication. The media index grew by 68 stories found by searching every candidate's name. Where BarrieToday's article pages could not be archived, the passage is the outlet's own one-line summary from its news feed, and says so. Every candidate in every race was read the same way; the 12 with nothing located are named on each issue page with the reason. Ten campaign websites could not be reached by our tools and are marked as such. Social media posts are not yet checked for anyone. Passages that fit no issue page — why a candidate is running, how they say they will work — appear under "General" on their own profile only. Six drafted passages were set aside in review. |
| September 10, 2026 | Debates and all-candidates meetings: none announced yet, and where to watch A new page, debates and all-candidates meetings, will list every public candidates' event for mayor, every ward and every school board with the host's own announcement as its source. As of today it lists none, because none has been announced anywhere we could find — Engage Barrie, CARP Barrie, the Chamber, the Library, the school boards, and the Simcoe.com and BarrieToday round-ups, each linked from the page. In 2022 the mayoral forum ran on October 1 and the ward meetings October 2–13; the page says so, and is re-checked. |
| September 10, 2026 | Candidate pages answer the questions people actually search Every 2026 candidate's page now opens with the plain questions a voter types — who they are, what they are running for, whether they are the incumbent, whether they have run before, how to reach the campaign, and who can vote for them — each answered from the record already on the page and marked up so search engines can show the answer directly. Page titles now lead with the candidate's name, the word Barrie and the office. The candidates page, incumbents and school boards are retitled the way people ask: who is running in Barrie, who is my councillor, who is running for trustee. |
| September 10, 2026 | Every candidate card now shows the election record in miniature The cards on the candidate list, the ward and school-board pages carry a small strip of the same chart each profile draws: a bar for every term held, a dot for every race lost, and a hollow mark for the 2026 contest, on a common 2003-to-2026 scale so a ward's field can be compared at a glance. Hover or tap a mark for the date and the result. Newcomers show a single mark at the right edge, which is itself the record. |
| September 10, 2026 | What the candidates have said: the rules go up before the words Every issue page and every 2026 candidate profile will carry a section for what candidates have said on that issue — verbatim passages from campaign websites, indexed news coverage and candidates' own social posts, each linked to its source and dated. The rules are published first, before a single passage: nothing is paraphrased, nothing is labelled for or against, a passage from news coverage says whether it is the candidate quoted or the reporter speaking, a candidate with nothing located on an issue is named as such with the date we looked, and a race is shown only once every candidate in it has been read the same way. Statements are gathered in a dated research batch, reviewed by hand, and a build check refuses any passage that is not found word for word in its archived source. The first batch follows. |
| September 10, 2026 | Certified ballot: 60 candidates, no acclamations The candidate list is now checked name for name against the City Clerk's signed List of Certified Candidates (Form EL07, dated August 24), and every filing time and contact detail is re-transcribed from the City's certified candidates page. Four people filed in the final two hours and were not on the City's list when we last read it: Christel Pena (Ward 6), William Cadeau (Ward 10), Candice Thomas (SCDSB Wards 4–6) and Rob Chiaramida (SMCDSB Wards 4/6–10). Samina Alim withdrew her Ward 7 nomination on the morning of nomination day and re-filed for Ward 8 five minutes later. The three races that had a single candidate in mid-August each drew a challenger, so no seat is acclaimed in 2026. Many campaigns added websites and social accounts to the City's list after August 21; a dozen profiles gained links. Brent Bowser (Ward 1) also wrote to us directly with his details; the one the City does not list, his Instagram, carries a new supplied tag beside the existing inferred and searched ones. |
| August 21, 2026 | Candidate list re-checked for nomination day: 56 candidates Six people filed in the final days before the 2 p.m. nomination deadline — Frank Casera (Ward 2), Nader Nasar George (Ward 6), Samina Alim and Michael Lewis (Ward 7), and Sean Fitzgerald and Chaudhry Farooq Haider Virk (SCDSB Wards 7–10) — and the candidate list is re-transcribed from the City's page as of August 21. A handful of candidate websites and social accounts turned up by our own web search, rather than the City's own list, now carry a searched tag distinct from the existing inferred one, so it is always clear where a link came from. The certified list is due August 24; expect another re-check then. |
| August 20, 2026 | Every campaign-finance filing now carries a published figure The 32 filings the campaign finance page had marked unresolved were re-read a second and third time, in places against a different archived copy of the scan. Nine verified outright or by recording the form's own printed bottom line as filed; three reclassified as self-funded where a declared $0 income conflicted with real, itemized spending; and the rest publish a partial or conventional figure with the gap explicitly flagged — none are silently estimated. Council expenses and campaign finance also now share one reconciled set of spending-type buckets, shown as colour-coded badges on every itemized table, and each candidate profile with either dataset gets its own chart, linked to the underlying data. |
| August 19, 2026 | Campaign finance and council expenses published: five cycles, thirty quarters Candidate financial statements are now transcribed across five election cycles — 2014, 2018, and 2022 general elections plus the 2016 Ward 7 and 2020 Ward 3 by-elections — at campaign finance. A companion page, council expenses, itemizes every disclosed line from the mayor and every councillor's quarterly expense reports, Q1 2019 through Q2 2026. |
| August 17, 2026 | Candidate list re-checked: 50 candidates, three races on acclamation track Five candidates filed with the City between August 10 and 14: Russell Tighe (mayor), Asmar Naveed (Ward 9), Darren Steeves (SCDSB Wards 7–10), Justin Heran (SMCDSB Wards 1/2/3/5) and Rachael Golem (Viamonde). The candidate list is re-transcribed from the City's page as of August 17. Races with a single candidate — on track for acclamation if nothing changes by the August 21 close — drop from five to three: Ward 6, Ward 7, and the SMCDSB Wards 4/6–10 zone. Details on acclamations. |
| August 17, 2026 | Media index re-swept: seven stories added The media index now carries election coverage published August 4–17, including BarrieToday's stories on the third and fourth mayoral candidates. Ottawa and provincial-politics pieces surfaced by the sweep were excluded under the index's standing rules. |
| August 17, 2026 | Population, budget and rate data get charts and history The population page extends back to the 2001 census for both the city and the metropolitan area, and adds 2021 demographics — age structure, households, tenure, income, immigration — each figure from the Statistics Canada census profiles. The budget, property tax, water rates and housing pages gain charts drawn from the same rows as their tables. |
Corrections
The policy
A correction is any published figure or statement that was wrong. When one is found, it is fixed on the page where it appears and logged here at the same time. The log entry stays up permanently, even after the error itself is long gone.
Formatting fixes and wording changes that do not alter a fact are not corrections; they appear in the updates above only when substantive. Updates in the ordinary course (a new candidate filing, a new budget year) are not corrections either: the site was right when published and the world changed.
How to report an error
Write to team@barrievotes.ca. Say which page, what the error is, and if you can, where the correct figure lives (a document beats a recollection; see what counts as a source). Reports are credited in the log unless you ask not to be named.
The log
| Date | Page | What was wrong | What it says now | Who flagged it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| October 7, 2026 | /issues/strong-mayor/ | Described the June 2026 amendment (O. Reg. 189/26) as removing an outgoing mayor's power to "approve" by-laws authorizing expenditures over $50,000, and as restricting "how late in the year" an outgoing mayor can start the next year's budget. The regulation removes the power to propose such by-laws under the provincial-priority power (s. 11(3)(c)), with exceptions for items in the last budget adopted before nomination day, emergencies and powers already delegated; and it bars proposing the next year's budget during the election year at all (s. 7(1.1)). | The section follows the regulation's terms and says when the limit would apply in Barrie. | Site re-read against the regulation text, October 7, 2026 |
| October 7, 2026 | /vote/ | How to vote and the internet-voting page told readers to check or update their voters' list registration at Elections Ontario's vreg.registertovoteon.ca. The City closed that route for the 2026 municipal election on September 1 and moved it to its own Voter Lookup and Registration Portal; the pages were revised on September 11 without catching the change. | Both pages point to the City's portal at barrie.ca/election, with the phone, email and City Hall alternatives the City lists. | City release of September 1, 2026, read October 7, 2026 |
| October 7, 2026 | /updates/ | The August 21 update said candidates filed before "the 8 p.m. nomination deadline." Nominations closed at 2:00 p.m. on August 21, as the key-dates page and the candidate pages said throughout. | The update reads "the 2 p.m. nomination deadline." | Site re-read, October 7, 2026 |
| September 15, 2026 | /issues/education/ | Said four trustee races were on the Barrie ballot, with two zones each for the English public and English Catholic boards, and (as of August 18) that two races were heading for acclamation. The English public board has three Barrie zones; there are seven races and 19 certified candidates, and no trustee race was acclaimed. | Seven races across four boards: three English public zones, two English Catholic, one each French public and French Catholic. The counts are now computed from the certified roster rather than typed. | External review, September 12, 2026 |
| September 15, 2026 | /data/council-votes/ | The reading note above the table said 2,872 voice-vote outcomes across 257 meetings while the section below it said 3,038 across 269. The note was typed from an earlier extraction and never updated. | 3,038 across 269 meetings in both places, computed from the motions file so the two cannot diverge again. | External review, September 12, 2026 |
| September 15, 2026 | /about/methodology/ | Said that before any council vote appeared on the site, a rule for which votes are selected would be published. Votes had been live since August with no selection at all. | States the actual rule: every recorded vote in the minutes is published, nobody chooses; voice-vote outcomes are listed by meeting as outcomes only. | External review, September 12, 2026 |
How this log is kept: entries are written by hand at the same time the fix lands on the page, and a site error is never removed.