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CITY: Calgary rated Canada’s most attractive city
        (AlbertaIndex, December 14, Friday) --- Locals may have a growing list of complaints, but Calgary has been rated Canada’s most attractive city according to the Conference Board of Canada's first-ever metropolitan benchmarking study.
        In its study of 27 Canadian cities, the board found that Calgary came out tops in its “attractiveness to people” index based on seven categories: Economy, Innovation, Environment, Education, Health, Society and Housing.

The study, “City Magnets: Benchmarking the Attractiveness of Canada's CMAs” also found that Calgary came out third when compared with 27 US cities.

“Labour shortages are already beginning to affect some Canadian cities. Attracting highly skilled workers-and the business investment they encourage is crucial to Canada’s economic competitiveness in the decades ahead,” said Mario Lefebvre, Director of the Conference Board's new Centre for Municipal Studies.

“The paradigm of ‘people go where the jobs are’ is changing to ‘businesses going where the people with skills and talent want to live.’ In other words, places attractive to people will also attract business investment.”

Overall, the results show that size matters. Five of the top six spots belong to big cities, with Toronto ranked second and Vancouver third.

Edmonton, Victoria, and Ottawa-Gatineau also score an ‘A’ grade and rank fourth through sixth. Montréal, in 14th spot and at the bottom of the ‘Bs’, has a lot of catching up to do.

Five mid-sized CMAs appear in the top half of the overall rankings. Included in this list are three provincial capitals: Victoria, Halifax, and Québec City. The other two mid-sized CMAs are Kitchener and Oshawa.

Of the 14 bottom-ranking positions, seven are Ontario CMAs. The once robust and now shrinking manufacturing sector has caused serious economic downturns in most Ontario CMAs, pulling down their overall scores.

Thunder Bay, ranked 27th, has been hit by the double whammy of no employment growth and very low income growth, as well as scoring low in the Health domain.

In addition to leading all Canadian CMAs, Calgary held its own when compared with 27 major cities in the US. Thanks to its red-hot economy, robust employment growth and young labour force, Calgary ranks just behind first-place Washington and second-place Austin as the only overall ‘A’ cities.

In general, Canadian cities trail their US counterparts on key economic measures and on higher education, but offer more affordable housing, better commuting options, healthier lifestyles and better student-teacher ratios. As well, the stronger employment growth recorded by many Canadian CMAs over the past five years is a promising sign.

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