Are Canadian troops in Iraq in combat? How much will that new tax credit really cost? Are incomes really stagnating?

Those are questions with straight answers, just don’t try to pry them from most politicians. With an election looming, one website wants to clear the fog and elucidate the facts: FactsCan.ca.

It could become Canada’s answer to Politifact

Factcheck.org and the Washington Post‘s Fact Checker . Over the past few years, those sites (and many like them) have dug into data claims, misleading promises and wild allegations, from inflated-voter fraud stats to inaccurate employment numbers. Now, it’s Canadian politicians’ turn.

“If you want something and it doesn’t exist, you might as well create it,” said Dana Wagner, one of three factual enthusiasts behind the site, in an email. “Our initial reason for being was that our founders could all have used a political fact-checker at one point, and we suspect other Canadians could too.”

The three purposefully pedantic Canucks behind FactsCan hope to launch well before the federal vote expected in October, but they first need a few more loonies to finish the site and cover start-up costs.

The trio has never actually met in person. Toronto-based Wagner connected with B.C.-based Jacob Shroeder and Ottawa’s Tyler Sommers through mutual Facebook friends. They all wanted to bring more truth and hard, measurable evidence to the political arena. And, they hope that launching FactsCan will spur other Canadians to get involved and volunteer their time and expertise.

“There’s a big gray area between black and white, and our analyses will take be taking context into account. That’s our commitment to depth and fairness,” she said.

And she even demonstrated her commitment to the site’s independence in the process of the story: she emailed to clarify that one of the founders (Sommers) briefly held a provincial conservative party membership about a decade ago, after initially saying all three have been life-long non-partisans.

And it seems Canadians have a ready appetite for facts: An IndieGoGo crowdsource project launched Tuesday has already raised over $1,200 of the $5,000 they are seeking.

Wagner said they are looking for “a lot of volunteers. From all over the country, from all types of backgrounds. The heavy lifting is in the reporting: the scanning, researching, writing and editing.”

FactsCan won’t just be another place for partisan parsing to migrate. Wagner said contributors, “will be vetted. We’ve got some unbreakable rules, a big one being that they will not join our team if they’ve got ties to a political party.”

Don’t take our word. Read up on our process, analyze our fact checks, hold our feet to the fire

The chattering classes in this country won’t be spared either, as pundits will also be subject to the site’s scrutiny.

Other rules include strict guidelines as to what will be fact-checked, so even editorial decisions like what to cover will be transparent.

“It’s a fair and consistent methodology, and it will be what ensures quality, consistency, and defensible adjudication. We’ll have this process public too (when our site is fully developed – right now we’re using a temp page), and we’re encouraging feedback on it,” Wagner said.

Two early examples posted online tackle NDP leader Thomas Mulcair’s assertion that ISIS has just changed its name a bunch of times and the U.S. has fought the same enemy for a decade (deemed “misleading”), and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s claim that “nobody in the world” regulates their energy sector (deemed “false”).

Don’t believe her? She welcomes the skeptics (as any good fact checker should): “If people are wondering whether or not they can trust us, that’s a fair question, and I would say: Why would you ever trust us? Don’t take our word. Read up on our process, analyze our fact checks, hold our feet to the fire.”