The Calgary Skyline as seen from a park east of the downtown area.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Calgary, Waterloo, Ottawa, Vancouver, St. John's, and Richmond Hill, Ont., top the Conference Board of Canada ranking of the country's most attractive cities to migrants.
These cities have "what migrants are looking for when choosing where to locate," according to the Conference Board's second report on the topic.
It analyzed 50 Canadian cities based on 41 indicators including health, economy, environment, society, education, innovation and housing to rank the places most attractive to skilled workers and mobile populations.
"Cities that fail to attract new people will struggle to stay prosperous and vibrant," said Mario Lefebvre, director of the Centre for Municipal Studies, in the report. "Although it would be hard to imagine a more diverse group of cities, each [top-ranking city]has particular strengths that make them magnets to newcomers, both from within Canada and abroad."
The six top cities all got an "A" grade in the report.
Fourteen cities landed in the second-tier, or "B" class, with Edmonton, Victoria, Markham, Vaughan, Kingston, Oakville, and Guelph in the top half of this group. Toronto, Canada's largest city, also earns a "B" grade, "held back by lacklustre results in the health and environment categories (too few physicians for such a large population, and too many days of poor air quality)," the report said.
The Toronto area attracted 35 per cent of Canada's immigrants between 2001 and 2006, but this is partly offset by migrants - 25,000 annually - leaving for other Canadian cities. London, Halifax, Lévis, Regina, Québec City, and Burlington also got "B" grades.
Twenty-one cities ranked in the "C" grade category, including Winnipeg, Montréal, and Hamilton. Mississauga and four of Vancouver's suburbs - Richmond, Burnaby, Coquitlam, and Surrey - earned "C" grades, as does nearby Abbotsford. Gatineau, Sherbrooke, Kitchener, Barrie, Saskatoon, Moncton, Brampton, Kelowna, Thunder Bay, Peterborough, St. Catharines, and Sudbury also get "C" grades.
The "D" class includes smaller or mid-sized cities: in Ontario, Oshawa, Brantford, Windsor, and Cambridge. In Quebec, Longueuil, Saguenay, Trois-Rivières, and Laval, and Saint John, New Brunswick.
"Along with struggling economies in most cases, seven of these nine cities have shown little population growth, while the other two posted a decline in population (Saint John and Saguenay)," the report said. "These nine cities are also clustered near the bottom of the innovation and education categories."
Tavia Grant