Moneysense, Canada’s personal finance website, looks at Canada’s Best Places to Live list.  They look at empirical criteriasuch as “housing affordability, incomes, job prospects, crime rates and access to health care.”  The information is taken from the Census Metropolitan Areas, Census Agglomeration and Statistics Canada.  This list includes every community with a population of more than 10,000 people, 180 cities and towns in all.  Moneysense does not expect everyone to agree with their findings, one cities appeal for one person may not be the same for another.  This list provides a fact-based comparison from which people can make their own decisions on where people would like to live.

This year Alberta’s capital, Edmonton, makes the top 10, jumping 7 spots from 15^th to 8^th “thanks to low takes, high levels of discretionary income and an extensive public transit system.  Last year the temperature sank lower than 0 degrees 178 days a year, which may pose a problem for some.”  A couple reasons the score is not higher was due to higher than average housing prices and crime rates but slight precipitation, low pollution levels and high household incomes from the recent oil boom “balance this out to make Edmonton a great place to live.”