Williams Lake Mayor Kerry Cook has called the ranking of the community in the bottom three of Canadian cities by a national online magazine as “not a true reflection of the quality of life in our city.”
Cook was responding to the recently released list produced by Money Sense.ca of Canadian municipalities with a population of greater than 10,000 that uses “empirical, objective criteria” to rank cities according to amenities, crime, weather, population, unemployment, number of health professionals and others. Overall, Williams Lake ranked 177 out of 180.
Ontario’s Ottawa-Gatinea was pegged as the best place to live; New Glasgow, N.S., the worst. Williams Lake ranked one spot below Quesnel and three spots above New Glasgow.
Much of the information was based on data from 2006. Some was generated from information gathered this year.
The crime stats were based on 2009 data gathered from the Canadian Centre for Justice Studies. Categories such as: population growth between 2001 and 2006; walk/bike to work represented the percentage of people who walked or took their bikes to work; weather that considered 700 mL to be the ideal volume of precipitation per year; new cars that looked at 2008-2010 model-year vehicles as a percentage of total vehicles; income taxes and sale taxes ratings were dependent upon provincial location; violent crime rates, total crime rates per 100,000 people and crime severity rates were considered based on 2009 data; the number of general practice and specialist physicians per community per 1,000 people were considered; as were the percentage of people who were employed by health occupations; points were also apportioned for each hospital, university or college as well as the percentage of people employed in arts, culture, recreation and sports.
Williams Lake ranked 61st for discretionary income and 96th for affordable housing and household income. At the other end of the spectrum it ranked 154 for job prospects and 178 for crime rate.
According to the most recent statistics provided by the RCMP, in 2010 crime decreased in all areas including auto theft, spousal assault, mischief, robbery and false alarms.
The two categories that saw a slight increase over 2009 were break and enter, to residences and businesses. Williams Lake, Cook said, is, “... a vibrant and diverse city and home to a compassionate and active community.”
In a follow-up article on the annual rankings, MoneySense.ca recognized the overall reduction in crime and concluded that, “Williams Lake isn’t likely to crack the top 10 of Canada’s Best Place to Live next year, but thanks to innovative thinking it’s moving in the right direction.”