Why 218 rows are not 218 people

Three denominators

The production database began with 218 legacy rows. Those rows are event leads: they are not a verified national total, and they are not a count of distinct people.

Normalization produced 218 event records, 208 named participant records, and 206 person identities. A participant is one person’s place in one event; a person may therefore appear in more than one event.

The missing people are visible

Ten inherited rows describe collective events whose full membership is unresolved. The archive retains the group estimate, marks participant resolution as incomplete, and refuses to manufacture person records to make the totals balance.

That distinction changes every aggregate. A chart of events can include one collective occurrence; a chart of individual movements must exclude unnamed participants and disclose the resulting denominator.

Coverage is not verification

Only 40 of the 218 event leads currently have at least one linked source lead. A link alone is not claim-level corroboration: source reliability, locator, rights, archive state, and the claim it supports still require review.

For that reason, release 2026-07-31.1 reports zero verified events. The number is not an admission hidden in fine print; it is the publication gate working as designed.

How to cite the release

Analyses should name the unit, scope, data version, and access date. “218 inherited event leads in release 2026-07-31.1” is reproducible; “218 Canadian politicians crossed the floor” is not supported by this release.