Our friends over at MoneySense magazine have just released their annual ranking of the country’s best places to live. There’s a new contender at the top for 2015.
For this report, MoneySense compared 209 cities and towns across Canada for factors such as unemployment, income, housing, transit, taxes and more. So who came out on top? A lot of smaller cities and towns mostly from central Canada are ranked the highest. Ottawa and Quebec City are the only major metropolises to crack the top 10.
Boucherville, Quebec, a suburb of Montreal, tops the list this year. Many towns in Western Canada which had been ranked amongst the best places to live in recent years have fallen down in the ratings in 2015. The decline in oil prices has taken its toll on local economies and job markets. For example, the town ranked as Canada’s best place to live in 2014, St. Albert, Alberta has dropped to the fourth spot this year.
Canada’s ten best places to live for 2015
Boucherville, Quebec
Population: 43,151
Unemployment rate: 2.88%
Median household income: $92,253
[Jobs in and around Boucherville]
Ottawa, Ontario
Population: 953,599
Unemployment rate: 6.86%
Median household income: $86,443
Burlington, Ontario
Population: 186,241
Unemployment rate: 4.27%
Median household income: $85,434
[Jobs in and around Burlington]
St. Albert, Alberta
Population: 70,650
Unemployment rate: 3.78%
Median household income: $129,129
[Jobs in and around St. Albert]
Blainville, Quebec
Population: 57,000
Unemployment rate: 8.1%
Median household income: $90,757
[Jobs in and around Blainville]
Oakville, Ontario
Population: 198,038
Unemployment rate: 6.21%
Median household income: $105,139
Stratford, Ontario
Population: 32,536
Unemployment rate: 5.30%
Median household income: $66,217
[Jobs in and around Stratford]
Lévis, Quebec
Population: 145,286
Unemployment rate: 4.29%
Median household income: $73,825
North Vancouver, British Columbia
Population: 90,413
Unemployment rate: 4.55%
Median household income: $53,784
[Jobs in and round North Vancouver]
Quebec City, Quebec
Population: 540,596
Unemployment rate: 4.00%
Median household income: $55,674
[Jobs in and around Quebec City]
The common denominator for the high quality of living for these top ranked town seems to mostly be: small cities or suburban towns near bigger cities that offer the benefits of small town living with a centre for the economic and employment opportunities nearby.
I prefer the urban centres, myself. I’m from Montreal (ranked 161 on the Best Places to Live index) and now live downtown Toronto (35th on the list.)
How does your town rank up? You can view the complete list of 209 towns and cities and the methodology for rating them over at MoneySense online.