Methodology
How VanCityGuide gathers, verifies, and dates every price and rule on the site.
The standard is simple to state and exhausting to maintain: every factual claim with a citation must be grounded in what the cited source actually says, never generalised from category-level assumptions. This page explains how that works in practice.
Sourcing standard
Primary government and Crown-corporation sources only.
For any claim about regulations, prices set by authorities, or government processes, we use only the sources listed below. Third-party guides, review aggregators, and scraped data do not qualify — they too often misstate the underlying rules, and there's no accountability when the information turns out to be wrong.
Canada Revenue Agency
FederalTaxes, SIN administration, GST/HST credit, Canada Child Benefit, T1135 foreign income reporting.
canada.ca/en/revenue-agency
Service Canada
FederalSocial Insurance Number (SIN) issuance, Service Canada Centre locations, employment programs.
canada.ca
BC Government
ProvincialMSP enrolment and eligibility, Residential Tenancy Act, child-care fee reduction, driver-licensing rules.
gov.bc.ca
ICBC
BC Crown corpDriver licence exchange jurisdictions, fees, knowledge test, road test, licensing-office locations.
icbc.com
CMHC
Federal Crown corpPurpose-built rental data, vacancy rates, market structure. Annual Fall Rental Market Report.
cmhc-schl.gc.ca
Statistics Canada
FederalCensus 2021 demographics, Survey of Household Spending (groceries, dining), labour-force data.
statcan.gc.ca
BC Hydro
BC Crown corpResidential electricity rates (tiered Schedule 1101), basic charge, optional flat-rate option.
bchydro.com
FortisBC
BC utilityResidential natural gas rates (Mainland zone), delivery charges, RNG blend percentage.
fortisbc.com
TransLink
Metro VancouverAdult / concession monthly pass fares, zone boundaries on SkyTrain and SeaBus, single-fare prices.
translink.ca
Metro Vancouver Regional District
Metro VancouverRegional water and sewerage rates, regional parks, regional growth strategy.
metrovancouver.org
BC Ministry of Education
ProvincialFoundation Skills Assessment results, school completion rates, official school satisfaction surveys.
gov.bc.ca/education
VPD, RCMP, BC Stats
Local + provincialCrime statistics, Crime Severity Index, calibrated safety context. Always paired with comparison.
vpd.ca · bcstats.gov.bc.ca
We do not use Yelp, Google Maps, or scraped review data. We do not use third-party newcomer-services aggregators. Where a fact can only be sourced from a secondary outlet (e.g., regional news reporting on a restaurant opening), we name the outlet explicitly and cite the article.
Price categories
There are three kinds of prices on this site.
Regulator-set prices
Pulled directly from the publishing authority's tariff page. Updated within 30 days of any announced rate change. Citations link to the specific authority page; retrieved dates reflect actual verification.
Example: TransLink 1-zone adult monthly pass ($111.60, effective July 1, 2025); BC Hydro tiered rate ($0.1172/kWh Tier 1, effective April 1, 2026); ICBC driver-licence fees.
Survey-derived market data
Pulled from the original published surveys (CMHC's Fall Rental Market Report, the StatCan Survey of Household Spending). Update cycles vary by source — annual for CMHC, every several years for StatCan. We note the survey period explicitly in each citation.
Example: Vancouver CMA two-bedroom CMHC average rent ($2,314 from October 2024 survey, published December 17, 2024); Census 2021 population and language data.
VanCityGuide-researched figures
Compiled from current listings, restaurant menus, and provider quotes within the past 90 days. Tagged 'vanguide-researched' with the methodology explained inline. Updated quarterly. These are clearly distinguished from regulator-set or survey-derived data in the citation.
Example: Typical casual-dinner price ($22 in Vancouver, Q1 2026); market-rent estimate from new listings (Rentals.ca, Liv.rent observation); typical gym membership.
The audit cycle
When we re-verify, and what triggers a full audit.
Reader-flagged errors
Highest priority. Any reader-flagged correction is verified within 48 hours, fixed if confirmed, and triggers a check of adjacent content for the same class of error.
Annual rule changes
BC rent-increase cap (announced September), CRA Basic Personal Amount (January), CMHC Fall Rental Market Report (December-January), TransLink fares (July). Each triggers a targeted audit of dependent content.
Major policy transitions
Substantial regulatory changes — like the GST/HST credit being replaced by the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit in July 2026, or HSBC Canada's acquisition by RBC in March 2024 — trigger updates to every page that references the old policy.
Every guide page carries a “Last reviewed” date in the header and a Sources footer at the bottom showing exactly which authoritative URLs the content was checked against. Cost-of-living pages carry a similar “Sources & data freshness” block. These dates reflect actual verification — not copy-paste of today's date.
When we get it wrong
We do get things wrong. Here's what we commit to.
The site contains thousands of factual claims. Some are incorrect, outdated, or imprecisely worded. We're a one-person editorial team — Cenk Karakuz in Vancouver — and we accept that errors are unavoidable.
What we commit to:
- Replying to correction emails. If you spot an error, send the URL and the issue to the contact form. We read everything and respond.
- Naming the correction publicly. When a reader correction triggers a substantive change, we name what was wrong, what's right, and when the fix shipped — both in the editorial and in the public commit history.
- Auditing adjacent content. A single correction usually flags a pattern. When a reader caught the Norway/ICBC error in May 2026, we audited every other newcomer guide. See the about page for that story and what changed because of it.
The rule
The single editorial standard, restated.
For any factual claim with a citation, the claim must be grounded in what the cited source actually says — never generalised from category-level assumptions.
This rule was added permanently after the Norwegian-reader correction in May 2026. It governs every guide, blog post, and price page on the site.
See also