A report takes one question, assembles the published material that speaks to it, and states
plainly where the evidence runs out. Each carries an executive summary, a reading time, a category and a data
appendix. None of them recommend a course of action.
10 reportsMedian length 14 minOldest 15 January 2026Newest 14 May 2026
Before you read
What a Whab report is
Three things worth knowing before you use one of these in your own work.
It describes, it does not advise
A report can tell you that connected cycling
networks are associated with higher trip counts. It will not tell you to build one. Recommendations belong
to the people accountable for the decision.
The appendix is the argument
Every report ships with the assembled data, the
definitions applied, and a note on each source’s limits. If the appendix and the prose disagree, the
appendix is correct and we want to hear about it.
Disagreement stays visible
Where two credible sources conflict, both appear.
We do not average them into a single tidier number, because the spread is usually the most informative
part of the picture.
Catalogue
Ten published reports
Topic10 of 10
Housing
18 min read WHAB-RPT-1
Completions in mid-sized cities, 2021–2025
Executive summary
Cities with between 100,000 and 500,000 residents completed more dwellings per capita than the largest
metropolitan areas in four of the last five years. This review separates that pattern from the arithmetic
effect of a small number of very large projects, which can move a mid-sized city’s per-capita figure by
more than a percentage point in a single quarter. It reconstructs the completions series for thirty-one
cities from permit and completion records, applies a common definition of the urban boundary, and reports
the result with and without projects above 300 units. The pattern survives both treatments, but the size of
the gap does not: it narrows from 27 per cent to 11 per cent once the largest projects are set aside.
Thirty-one cities, five years, one common boundary definition. · Housing · Communities
Transportation
15 min read WHAB-RPT-2
Transit ridership since 2019: fourteen systems, one measure
Executive summary
Recovery in transit ridership is usually reported as a percentage of a 2019 baseline, which quietly
assumes that 2019 was normal and that every system counts trips the same way. Neither holds. This report
rebuilds a comparable linked-trip measure for fourteen systems, documents where each agency’s published
figure differs from it and why, and examines what separates the systems that recovered fastest. The
strongest association is not with total service hours restored but with the share of service running outside
the traditional weekday peak. Systems that rebuilt midday, evening and weekend service recovered ridership
roughly a year ahead of systems that restored peak service first.
Includes a full crosswalk between agency-published and comparable figures. · Transportation
Technology
12 min read WHAB-RPT-3
Rural broadband: what ‘available’ counts
Executive summary
National broadband availability is reported at the level of a service area. If a provider offers
qualifying service anywhere in that area, the whole area is counted as served. This report quantifies the
distance between that definition and household experience by comparing area-level availability filings with
measured household speed tests in the same geographies. In rural service areas the two measures diverge by
an average of 14 percentage points, and the divergence is widest where service areas are geographically
large. The report does not conclude that the official figure is wrong; it concludes that it answers a
different question than most readers assume.
Companion table lists divergence by service area size. · Technology · Communities
Environment
14 min read WHAB-RPT-4
Urban tree canopy: why municipal figures differ
Executive summary
Two cities can measure canopy honestly and produce figures that cannot be compared. The differences come
from four choices: whether imagery is captured leaf-on or leaf-off, the minimum patch size counted as
canopy, whether the measurement boundary is the municipal boundary or the built-up area, and whether the
assessment uses aerial imagery or lidar. This report recalculates canopy for eleven cities under a single
set of choices and publishes both the original and the recalculated figures side by side. Nine of the eleven
move by more than two percentage points; two move by more than six.
Recalculated figures published alongside the originals. · Environment
Education
16 min read WHAB-RPT-5
School enrolment and residential construction
Executive summary
New housing does not produce school-age children at a predictable rate, but planning assumptions often
treat it as though it does. This report pairs five years of completions data with enrolment records at the
catchment level for four school boards. Detached and row housing generated between 0.31 and 0.44 school-age
children per unit within five years of occupancy. Apartment completions generated between 0.06 and 0.19,
with the variation driven almost entirely by unit size rather than by tenure or location. The report sets
out where the relationship is stable enough to be useful and where it is not.
Catchment-level pairing, four boards, five years. · Education · Housing
Environment
13 min read WHAB-RPT-6
Household energy retrofits and measured outcomes
Executive summary
Programme reporting usually counts retrofits completed. This report looks at what happened to measured
consumption afterwards, using utility summaries for homes that completed programme-supported upgrades
between 2020 and 2024. Median natural gas consumption fell 18 per cent in the year after a building envelope
upgrade and 31 per cent after a heating system replacement combined with envelope work. Electricity
consumption rose in homes that switched to heat pumps, which is expected and is not a failure of the
retrofit. The report explains why counting completed retrofits and measuring energy outcomes give different
pictures of the same programme.
Consumption measured for twelve months before and after. · Environment · Housing
Communities
11 min read WHAB-RPT-7
Library and community space use since 2019
Executive summary
In-person library visits are at 69 per cent of their 2019 level while programme attendance has passed it.
Both statements come from the same annual returns. This report separates visits, programme attendance,
borrowing, digital sessions and room bookings, shows how each behaved through and after 2020, and explains
why a single ‘library use’ number cannot represent them. It also documents a measurement change:
several systems began counting digital catalogue sessions differently in 2021, which accounts for a visible
step in the national series that is not a change in behaviour.
Five separate measures, reported separately. · Communities · Education
Transportation
12 min read WHAB-RPT-8
Cycling networks: kilometres and connectivity
Executive summary
Kilometres of cycling infrastructure is the measure most often published and the least useful on its own.
A network of disconnected segments can report the same total as a connected one. This report applies a
connectivity measure to the cycling networks of nine cities: the share of protected lane kilometres that
connect to another protected facility without an intervening gap. The figure ranges from 34 to 81 per cent.
The report includes the full method so municipalities can reproduce it, and notes the two cases where local
conditions make the measure misleading.
Method published in full for reproduction. · Transportation
Communities
17 min read WHAB-RPT-9
Newcomer settlement patterns over a decade
Executive summary
Settlement patterns have shifted away from the three largest metropolitan areas, but not evenly and not
everywhere. This report tracks where newcomers settled in their first year of residence between 2015 and
2025, using published landing and tax filing geography. The share settling initially in the three largest
metropolitan areas fell from 61 to 47 per cent. Growth was concentrated in a group of eighteen mid-sized
cities, several of which had no measurable newcomer settlement a decade ago. The report is careful about
what first-year geography can and cannot tell us: onward movement within Canada is substantial and is
measured poorly.
Municipal open data: consistency and machine readability
Executive summary
This report assesses how consistently ninety-two municipalities publish the datasets that support the
indicators on this platform. It scores four things: whether the dataset exists, whether it is machine
readable, whether the schema is stable between releases, and whether a change log is published. Fifty-eight
municipalities publish at least one qualifying dataset; nineteen keep a stable schema across three
consecutive years; six publish a change log. The report includes the full scoring rubric and each
municipality’s score, along with a note on why a low score often reflects staffing rather than
policy.
Full rubric and per-municipality scores included. · Technology · Communities
Publication record
Reports by topic and month
Reports by topic
Coverage follows the availability of comparable published material, not reader demand.
Source Whab editorial registerUpdated 14 May 2026Cadence On publication
Reading time published by month
A rough measure of editorial output. Longer months usually mean a report needed a larger appendix rather than a longer argument.
Source Whab editorial registerUpdated 14 May 2026Cadence Monthly
Suggesting a report
What makes a good suggestion
We publish roughly two reports a month and choose subjects where comparable published material already
exists. A suggestion is most likely to be taken up if it names a specific measure, a geography, and a period,
and if it identifies at least one public source. Suggestions that require original data collection are
declined, since we do not run surveys.
Send suggestions to info@whab.digital. We
reply to every suggestion, including the ones we decline, and we say why.