The Institute of Marriage and Family Canada recently released a report entitled, “Canada’s top family-friendly cities.” The IMFC was founded in 2005 and exists to conduct, compile and present the latest and most accurate research to ensure that marriage and family friendly policy are foremost in the minds of Canada’s decision makers.
This city report card is a comprehensive effort to measure where families thrive in Canada and received a great deal of media coverage all across Canada. Thirty-three Canadian cities received grades in five main categories:
• Community feel—includes charitable giving rates, whether residents have lived there five years or more, parks and community centres, the homicide rate and the median commute
• Education choice—the presence of greater school choice was graded higher and this was measured by getting a list of schools for the city and finding out whether they are public or independent
• Cost of living—includes the food and household CPI, the cost of gas and the cost of housing
• Economic strength—looks at employment rates and tax takes
• Family independence—looks at family form, understanding that research shows two parent families bring more social capital, also the percentage of seniors living with family and the unpaid hours spent caring for children and seniors
Included in the top five with an A overall are three bigger cities—Vancouver, British Columbia and Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta, but also the smaller but growing cities of Kitchener and Guelph in Ontario. Other cities had many outstanding points—shown by an A+ in our city report card. For example, Winnipeg has the lowest cost of living in the country and Ottawa-Gatineau has a lot of green space and high levels of charitable giving.
At the bottom with a C grade signifying room for improvement were Saguenay and Trois-Rivières in Quebec; also Saint John, New Brunswick, St. John’s, Newfoundland and Thunder Bay, Ontario. No city in Canada received an F grade overall, however, some cities failed in a particular category. For example, Abbotsford-Mission in British Columbia has a very high homicide rate.
Some cities with an F in a single category, overcame this to still come out on top. Oshawa, for example, received an F for long commute times, but emerged with an overall B+ grade. There are many cities clustered in the B or B+ range.
It’s fair to say that all Canadian cities are great places to live in international comparison. However, within that context, the grades are an indication of places where the economy is even stronger, where there’s more population growth, lower taxes, lots of green space and lower commute times—the sorts of things that make it easier to thrive in a great community.
Canada’s top family-friendly cities can be read in full on our website: http://www.imfcanada.org.