Research methodology and source coverage

Council and committee records, Committee of Adjustment decisions, tribunal decisions, planning applications and applicable policy records.

These are public records published by Ontario municipalities and tribunals. Beiti reads what the publisher has made available and nothing else — it does not hold private file notes, draft staff reports, or anything a municipality has not posted.

Not every municipality publishes the same thing, and the difference changes what an answer can tell you.

A decided applications register lists applications and their outcomes. When Beiti reads one, it is reading the decision.

Council and committee agendas list what a meeting considered. An item on an agenda is a mention, not an outcome — the matter was raised, and the agenda alone does not say how it ended.

Both are searched. Every finding in a report carries its record type, so you always know which of the two you are looking at.

Beiti collects these records continuously, whether or not anyone has asked for them yet. That is why a question about 2023 can be answered today rather than starting a scrape that takes weeks.

If you leave the search terms blank, Beiti takes them from your question — and it does not treat every word the same way.

Distinctive words decide which records come back. In “daycare approvals in Barrie since 2023”, that word is daycare.

Common planning words — planning, application, development — are recorded where they appear but are never used to find things. Searching on planning would match nearly every agenda ever published, which is the same as not searching at all.

The place and the period are chosen separately on the form, so Beiti strips them out of the question rather than searching for them twice.

Every report states the terms it actually ran, so a derivation you disagree with is visible rather than hidden. You can also set the terms yourself on the intake form.

Transparency belongs with the answer, not in front of the question. Every completed report and workbook states:

• What was searched — each municipality, the kind of record read there, the period and the terms.
• What was found — every hit with its source link, its date and its record type.
• What was unavailable — any source that could not be reached, listed by name and excluded from the findings rather than silently skipped.
• When it was read — the date of the search, because a public record can change after it.

A report with no hits says so and still records the scope searched. An empty result is evidence; a silent gap is not.

Beiti reports what public records say. It does not interpret them for legal effect, confirm that a record is current at the moment you read it, or replace a planner, lawyer or surveyor. Research support only — not legal, planning or investment advice.