How We Work
Editorial Policy
Where our numbers come from, how they get verified before publication, and what advertising is not allowed to touch. If a figure on this site fails any standard below, it should not be there — tell us.
MississaugaWallet.ca exists to answer one question on every page: what does this cost you, specifically, where you live in Mississauga — and what can you do about it? That only works if the numbers are right. This page sets out the standards that keep them right, and how to hold us to them.
01 / Who Writes ThisAuthorship and Accountability
Every article carries a publication date, and a last-verified date. We do not publish under invented expert credentials.
Where a page draws on specialist input — a licensed mortgage broker, a property tax agent, a municipal staff response — that source is named in the text or in the source list.
02 / SourcingThe Three-Tier Source Standard
Every number we publish is classified before it goes live. The tier determines whether it can be stated as fact, stated only with attribution, or not used at all.
Tier 1 Publishable as fact
Primary and authoritative sources: City of Mississauga, Region of Peel, MPAC, the Ontario Energy Board, Alectra Utilities, Enbridge Gas, the Canada Revenue Agency, the Ontario Ministry of Finance, Metrolinx and MiWay, Statistics Canada, and government-published PDFs, by-laws, and rate schedules.
A Tier 1 figure can be stated directly, with the source named and linked.
Tier 2 Attributed estimates only
Credible commercial and market sources: Zumper, Zolo, Zoocasa, Door Insight, established local and national media, industry reports.
A Tier 2 figure may only appear with explicit attribution in the sentence itself (“according to Zumper’s July 2026 rent report…”), never as a bare stated fact, and never as the sole basis for a calculator’s default value.
Tier 3 Not usable
Crowd-sourced and unverifiable aggregators: Numbeo, CareerBeacon, scraped listing averages, and any site that will not disclose its methodology or sample.
Tier 3 figures are never published, in any framing, including as a “for comparison” aside.
A statistic with no traceable source is not a low-confidence figure — it is an error. Publishing one is a hard failure that triggers the Corrections process before anything else is rewritten on the page.
What Happens Before a Figure Publishes
- Trace to originEvery rate, fee, and dollar amount is traced back to the body that sets it — not to another article that quoted it. Secondary citation chains are broken and re-sourced.
- Verify against the primary documentThe figure is checked against the current by-law, rate schedule, fee table, or CRA/OEB publication, and the source is linked directly where a public URL exists.
- Date itThe effective date of the rate is recorded, along with when the next scheduled change is expected. A figure with no known effective date does not publish.
- Check cross-page consistencyThe figure is compared against every other page on this site that uses it. Where a previously published figure conflicts, the discrepancy is resolved and both pages are updated — one number, site-wide.
- Recompute the worked exampleAny calculation shown to the reader is recomputed independently from the verified inputs, including the calculator defaults that depend on it.
- Flag confidenceWhere a figure is a Tier 2 estimate or a modelled projection rather than a Tier 1 published rate, it is labelled as such on the page rather than presented with false precision.
Keeping Pages Current
Rate-sensitive content decays. We review it on the schedule the rates themselves move on, not on an arbitrary content calendar.
| Content area | Review trigger |
|---|---|
| Property tax rates and levies | City and Region budget approval, and again at final tax billing |
| Property assessments | MPAC assessment cycle updates and reassessment announcements |
| Electricity pricing | Each OEB regulated price plan change and Alectra rate order |
| Natural gas pricing | Each OEB-approved Enbridge quarterly rate adjustment |
| Water and wastewater | Region of Peel annual rate change |
| Business licensing and municipal fees | Annual City of Mississauga Fees and Charges By-law update |
| Transit fares | MiWay and Metrolinx fare change announcements |
| Tax brackets, credits, HST thresholds | Federal and Ontario budgets, and annual CRA indexation |
| Rent and housing market figures | Quarterly, plus the annual Ontario rent increase guideline |
When a page is updated, the last-verified date changes. When an update changes a dollar figure a reader may already have acted on, it is handled as a correction with a visible notice — not a silent edit. See Corrections.
05 / IndependenceThe Wall Between Revenue and Editorial
This site is funded by display advertising and affiliate arrangements, disclosed in full in the Disclaimer. The following are firm:
- No advertiser, affiliate partner, or sponsor reviews, approves, or sees editorial content before publication.
- Rankings, comparisons, and recommendations are never sold. Payment cannot buy a position, a mention, or a favourable conclusion.
- Whether a product carries an affiliate link has no bearing on whether we recommend it, and we say plainly when the better option for a reader pays us nothing.
- Any content produced under a paid or sponsored arrangement is labelled as sponsored on the page, above the content, in plain language.
- We do not accept payment, gifts, or consideration from any municipal body, utility, political campaign, or candidate, and we do not endorse candidates.
- Advertising is never styled to resemble editorial content.
If a conflict exists, it goes on the page
Where we have any relationship — commercial, personal, or professional — with a company or organization we are writing about, that relationship is disclosed in the article itself, not buried in a policy page.
How Articles Are Built
The house style exists to serve utility, not tone:
- Lead with the number. The financial answer appears in the opening lines. No scene-setting, no “in today’s economy” preamble.
- Show the mechanism. A cost is explained through the billing or by-law logic that produces it, so the reader can check it against their own statement.
- Localize or cut. If a claim is equally true in Barrie and Windsor, it does not belong here. Every page answers for Mississauga and Peel specifically.
- End in an action. Each piece closes with something the reader can do, tied to a concrete dollar or time outcome.
- Model transparently. Where we model a household, its assumptions — income, usage, tenure, ward, plan type — are stated so the reader can tell whether it resembles theirs.
- No false precision. An estimate is presented as an estimate, with its range, not as a decimal-point certainty.
What We Do Not Publish
- Individualized financial, tax, legal, or investment advice — see the Disclaimer for why.
- Figures sourced only from Tier 3 aggregators.
- Savings claims we cannot reconstruct from published rates.
- Speculation about property values, interest rates, or market direction presented as forecast.
- Content about identifiable private individuals’ finances.
- Undisclosed sponsored content, in any form.
When We Get It Wrong
We will get things wrong — rates move, by-laws get amended mid-year, and source documents contradict each other. What we commit to is fixing it visibly and quickly. The full process, including what we treat as a correction versus a routine update and how fast we respond, is on the Corrections page.
Challenge a Figure
If a number here does not match your bill, your assessment notice, or the municipality’s own document, we want to know. Email info@mississaugawallet.ca with the page URL and the figure in question, or file it through Corrections.