Burlington at #2? 
I have nothing against the place but …
I suspect that I and the good folks at Moneysense have very different opinions as to what constitutes a best place to live.
The CanaDoper Café (2012 edition of The great, ongoing Canadian current events and politics thread.)
And Ottawa at number 1. RickJay and I are apparently very fortunate Canadians.
Because I loathe highway 7 just that much, I must insist, Leaffan, that despite where the lines on the maps are drawn, the fact that you are several minutes beyond KANATA means that you don’t live in Ottawa. I’ve had this argument with my friend, who used to live in Ashton…sorry, it’s the butt-end of nowhere and you can’t claim to live in a big city. 
Also - Repentigny is the best place to live in Québec? REPENTIGNY? If you like mega-malls, big box stores, no local employment and a 3 hour commute over bridges, maybe. Personally, I’d rather kill myself.
What a stupid list.
That’s not what my tax bill tells me. 
Ottawa: “We tax people who live an hour away. Best place to live, yeah!!!”
As I click on the headers to check the rankings, I’m especially puzzled. Victoria ranks #4 behind Oakville, Burlington and Port Hope for weather? Yellowknife and Whitehorse rank ahead of Stratford for culture? Where are they getting these rankings from?
To be fair, when I visited Yellowknife a couple years ago, it seemed very cultured, if your idea of culture is fishing, dilapidated housing, and public drunkenness. Oh, and I’m pretty sure we drove past a movie theatre! 
I may be biased, but the fact that Montreal is ranked 149th (though they do have DDO at 136 - no other boroughs or part of the Island make it on the list that I can see?) yet Toronto is 47th and Vancouver is 56th strikes me as rather odd.
I honestly have no respect for this list, the more I look at it. It’s insane to compare the unemployment rates of tiny single-industry towns (Estevan, SK - population 10000 primarily working in mining/coal/oil/gas to a city of several million with a much more diverse economy. It’s just a meaningless comparison, really.
I don’t get the weather ones either:
How is 700mm of precipitation a year ideal? Why? If a mountainous region with lots of skiing and other outdoor winter attractions gets more than that, somehow that’s a bad thing? That’s ridiculous. Number of days below 0C is a negative thing? Really? Do you know how crappy a 0C day is in the middle of winter? Give me -5C and some snow on the ground rather than slush, TYVM. How about days above a certain temperature? How about days of sunniness?
How is culture based on number of people employed in the Arts? What about indie bands, artists, performers, theatre troupes, etc who also work other jobs as their primary source of employment? I can absolutely tell you that the culture in Sherbrooke is better than that of Brossard (ranked 66th and 20th respectively) - Brossard gets a higher ranking because the Montréal Canadiens practice facility is located there.
For that matter, read the post by John in the comments section here. He had some of the same thoughts and expressed them better 
What he said. In addition, a lot of the votes for the Wildrose Party are not votes for them, but votes against the glued-in-place Conservatives. As Waenara alluded to, you practically have to be caught in the act of eating a baby for a Conservative leader to lose an election here.
That all said, I’m not sure why the more rightwing Wildrose Party is attracting so many votes - I think it’s a combination of voting against the Conservatives and not doing your homework (just supporting the other party you’ve actually heard of in the news lately). I think people are also supporting the idea of the Wildrose Party making the Conservatives accountable for all their corruption without looking further into what the Wildrose Party stands for. And, let’s face it, there are still a lot of small-c conservative people here who are okay with a rightwing agenda. Not all of us are rednecks, but some are.
Ah, Yellowknife, cultural centre of Canada.
Regina is #5 on the Top Ten Cities list? I guess they’ve cleaned up their massive crime problem, then. 
And Red Deer at #9. It’s probably close to #1 for rednecks and jacked-up trucks, but I don’t think that was one of the criteria for this list.
I live in Fredericton, #7 on that list, and I must heartily disagree with its placement. It belongs somewhere around, oh, #4000. I looked at the criteria–air quality? Well, it’s a relatively small place surrounded by fifty zillion acres of Irving-owned forests. Sure, the air is nice. Housing? Of course housing is relatively inexpensive, because no one wants to live here. The houses are cheap, sure, but mostly they’re pretty run-down and old. The sales tax is 13%! The transit system is ATROCIOUS. Yes, there’s a hospital and university here, which count for “amenities,” but it’s not like it’s brought all that much to the place. There are still next to no restaurants and hardly any good shops. In the past year, I think half a dozen stores and restaurants “downtown” have closed.
This is a useless list.
That’s the difficulty of trying to quantify the contribution of culture to society. Employment figures are at least hard facts, but they say nothing about the attendance, the artistic quality nor the outreach to the community. It isn’t enough, apparently, to say that OSM/MSO is an outstanding orchestra with an international reputation and a discography of award-winning recordings - show me some numbers!
And where they got figures that show there are more people employed in culture working in Canmore than in Montreal, Toronto or Calgary, I will never know!
True enough. I’ve often said that local Conservative candidates could kick puppies, strangle kittens, and streak down Third Avenue, and still win an election.
But there has been some dissatisfaction locally with the Conservatives, mainly for not being conservative enough. Strangely (to me, anyway), such things as abortion and cultural education (including awareness of different religions) in schools are still hot potatoes here in southern Alberta. It may seem to the RoC that these things are settled, as indeed they are; but many people locally are still arguing that abortion is murder and should be illegal, and that the current provincial education bill means that children might be introduced to (gasp) religions other than the ones that their parents adhere to.
It sounds backwards, and it is–in some ways, attitudes here don’t seem to have changed since, say, 1966. Sometimes, I’d like to take the population of southern Alberta and drop it all into Toronto for a week, just so folks can see that culturally, religiously, attitudinally, and physically different people aren’t necessarily evil or scary people.
But these may be the people who will vote for Wildrose.
You’re probably right. I am from small-town Saskatchewan, but I’ve been in Calgary for the last 22 years, so I’m probably well out of touch with how small town and rural people think.
The mere fact that Regina places way ahead of Saskatoon tells you all you need to know about the usefulness of this list.
:waving smiley: to Southern Piper
HEY! Estevan produced ME! that’s got to count for something! 
Well, I wouldn’t call our (admittedly, little) city “small town and rural,” but FWIW, I find that I do need a big city break from time to time. A choice of malls, non-“Canadian Chinese” food, and people who have no interest in what church you attend or how often, are among the things I like to encounter from time to time.
Definitely a negative.
I don’t understand why all of Saskatchewan wasn’t voted down simply because of the watermelon hats.
WATERMELON HATS ARE NOT CULTURE!!!
ETA: And I’m trying not to think about it, but when he was house sitting my brother told me he drew a watermelon on the bottom of something in my house and he’s 100% convinced I’ll never find it. I try not to think about it - to avoid tearing my house upside down looking for it - but once in a while I look around and wonder…
He’s not a Roughrider’s fan, though. He just has a longstanding habit of doodling watermelons on my stuff because he can.
ETA ETA: Watermelon hats can GROW culture, though…
Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean that your city was small town or rural; I just meant that I’m not in touch with people who do live in small towns and on farms.
Not at all, and no offense taken.
I’m just surprised at the so-called “corporate” people who walk into their lawyer’s office, with manure-encrusted jeans and workboots, and sweaty John Deere cap (which they do not take off) who expect their lawyer to be in a cleaned and pressed suit and shirt and tie. And are insulted if the lawyer dares to have a loosened tie.
There’s a reason I practice the law that I do, and such folks aren’t it.