List of best places to live in Canada released for 2016

Moneysense Magazine has once again released its list of the best places to live in Canada, with Kelowna and Kamloops tied in the rankings at 117 out of 219.

Down from 84th in 2015, Kelowna was cited as having a healthy population growth, good weather, and deemed easy to walk, bike and take transit. Kamloops went up in ranking as the city was 121st in the 2015 rankings. With low taxes, accessibility, and good weather, Kamloops rose in the ranks to tie with Kelowna.

Moneysense named Ottawa as the best place to live in Canada, followed by Burlington, Ont., Oakville, Ont., and St. Albert, Alta.

West Vancouver and North Vancouver topped the B.C. list. Rimouski, Que., was named best community to retire, Blainville, Que., was best place to raise a child and Ottawa best for new Canadians.

West Vancouver was also named as the richest place in Canada with a base household net worth is $3.5 million.

To come up with the annual list, Moneysense said it looked at many different elements that people enjoy in their city. Using 35 separate categories, the Best Places to Live in Canada rankings looked at weather, demographics, wealth, housing affordability, commute, and others such as crime, taxation and culture.

According to the methodology, a small city has a population below 100,000, a mid-size city had a population between 100,001 and 400,00 and a large city had a population of 400,001 or more. Cities were given points for each category, with a total of 103 points up for grabs. Each category was allotted a number of points depending on the importance of the category, some worth 10 points while others worth one point.

While a perfect score in all categories would give a city 103 points, the top city this year, Ottawa, only garnered 71.7 points followed closely by Burlington at 70.6 points.

To see the full results click here.