New Glasgow thinks it gets a raw deal from MoneySense rankings

Rankings and listings are meat and drink to many magazines -- something around which they build annual theme issues (for instance, the Maclean's universities issue) and the various top 10, 50, 100 or 1,000 lists.

One of these is the popular annual ranking by MoneySense magazine of Canada's Best Places to Live, in which the cities and towns at the top of the list crow and promote their livability (Victoria, Ottawa and Kingston came 1, 2, 3); and the cities at the bottom of the list lament their placement. That's the case with New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, which this year ranked 154 out of 154 communities in the MoneySense list, and feels it gets a raw deal, that the methodology is both unrealistic and unfair and that the magazine just doesn't understand them.

Several factors are taken into account: weather, air quality, affordable housing, household income, discretionary income, job prospects, new cars, taxes, population growth, health care, crime, walk/bike to work and amenities. This time around, they added tax rates and a cultural "buzz factor".

MoneySense says its fourth annual ranking "measures every important aspect of every community in Canada" and editor Ian McGugan even has a podcast that explains (among other things) specifically why New Glasgow came last:

“Basically, it’s about high unemployment, high crime rates; it had not been scoring very high in years past and what dragged it down to the very bottom this year was the addition of tax. People on the east coast tend to pay more tax than most Canadians.”

Elsewhere on the magazines's site, McGugan elaborates:

“Our grading system looks only at features that have a broad appeal and that can be reliably measured. And while we have nothing against beaches and nice scenery, we concentrate on practical matters, like how easy it is to find a job, locate a doctor and afford a house. We want readers to refer to our listings when they go to buy a house, move or invest in a community.”

New Glasgow Mayor Barrie MacMillan was quick to defend his town in an article in The News, serving Pictou County, Nova Scotia.

"We know these are difficult times and we are certainly willing to see what useful information can be gleaned from the evaluation. Many issues are much a broader purview than that of any small town and there also seems to be the challenge of MoneySense understanding what constitutes a community or a city....It would be helpful if MoneySense had a better understanding of the communities it is evaluating, especially the smaller ones and we welcome them to visit our town and our region. Maclean's magazine has done a lot of work with universities from coast to coast to make their universities ratings issue credible and perhaps if MoneySense had direct communications with the municipalities it is evaluating there would be better understanding of boundaries and population bases as well as the unique character and other important intangible qualities that impact quality of life."”

Kim Dickson, the town's director of marketing and communications, said it's a mixed blessing to be lumped in with much larger centres.

"One might consider it positive for New Glasgow to be on the radar with large urban centres such as Victoria, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver when you think of how many communities in Canada are not even evaluated. As a municipality the categories MoneySense evaluated are ones that we have no direct or indirect impact upon. It would be more realistic and paint a more complete picture to add or enhance categories that reflect the services that municipalities deliver directly."