Toronto Tops CIBC’s Annual Metropolitan Economic Index for Canadian Cities

Toronto has ranked near the top of the Canadian Metropolitan Economic Activity Index for five of the last seven years (Paul Bica)

Toronto leads all Canadian cities with a score of 20.6 points in the most recent CWM Metropolitan Economic Activity Index, which rates the economic activity of Canadian cities according to nine economic variables selected by CIBC’s World Markets subsidiary.

The indicators used in formulating the Index score include a city’s unemployment rate, population growth, bankruptcy rate and housing starts growth rate.

While Toronto did not lead other major Canadian cities in any of the nine areas of economic activity, it consistently ranked near the top in most of the categories, providing it with the highest cumulative score.

Toronto’s manufacturing sector benefited from an increase in automobile purchases in the United States as that country experienced an economic recovery, and an expansion of its construction industry, as housing starts, led by condominium construction, unexpectedly grew in the city.

Trailing Toronto in the top six Canadian cities were the Prairie metropolises of Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, and Edmonton in descending rank.

Calgary, coming second with a score of 19.5 points, continued to benefit from having one of the lowest unemployment rates, highest home sales growth rates, and highest population growth rates of Canadian metropolises.

Three Canadian Cities in Top 10 in World Liveability Ranking

Vancouver placed third in the Economist's annual liveability ranking for the second year in a row, after spending most of the last decade in first place

The Economist’s annual liveability ranking was published on Tuesday and it placed three Canadian cities, Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary, in the top 10.

Vancouver placed third for the second year in a row, failing once again to regain the first place position that it had held in the rankings for nine consecutive years until 2010. Ahead of Vancouver is Melbourne, Australia, which came in first, and Vienna, Austria, which placed second.

Other Canadian cities also placed well, with Toronto coming fourth and Calgary tying Adelaide, Australia for fifth place. The ranking, created by the Economist Intelligence Unit, evaluates a city’s liveability according to five indicators:

  1. stability, which includes threats of crime and war,
  2. the quality and availability of private and public health care,
  3. culture and environment, which includes qualities like absence of social and religious restrictions, average temperature/humidity, number of cultural events, and the availability of goods and services,
  4. the quality of public and private education
  5. infrastructure

The index does not factor in cost of living, which worked in favour of Melbourne, as it placed 15th worldwide in Mercer’s annual cost of living survey this year, far ahead of Vancouver and Toronto which placed 63rd and 61st worldwide respectively.

Vancouver Sees 12 Percent Drop in Housing Prices in July from Same Time Last Year

Year on year home prices declined 12 percent in Vancouver in July

Vancouver, one of the most popular Canadian housing markets for the country’s immigrants, saw the average value of real estate purchases in July drop 12 percent from the same period last year, according to data collected by Bloomberg News.

The city’s real estate prices have boomed in recent years due in large part to foreign investment from China and home purchases by Chinese immigrants, who are the city’s largest foreign born ethnic group.

With a cooling Chinese economy and Vancouver home prices that have risen to become the highest in Canada though, many this year have been warning that Vancouver’s real estate market is in a bubble.

Toronto also saw a slow down in its real estate market, although it was much more moderate, with year on year home purchase volume decreasing by 1.5 percent in July.

Federal and Ontario Governments to Spend $57 Million to Train Immigrants

Image of Toronto at night. A total of $57 million in funding will be provided by the Ontario provincial government and the federal government for projects in Ontario that assist immigrants in integrating into the Canadian labour market

The Ontario provincial government and the federal government hope to put an end to the adage of the immigrant taxi cab driver with a PhD, by spending a combined $57 million to train new Canadians to gain the credentials necessary to work in their field of study in Canada.

Data emerging over the last few years has shown a growing income gap between recent immigrants and other Canadians which has spurred the federal and several provincial governments to launch a number of initiatives to reverse the situation.

Most notably was the formation of the federal umbrella program, the Foreign Credential Referral Office (FCRO), in 2007 which funds projects run by regulatory bodies, immigrant-serving organizations and other organizations that help recent immigrants and those looking to immigrate to Canada update their foreign credentials to qualify to work in Canada in their vocation.

The $57 million of funding will be a significant expansion of government efforts to help new immigrants integrate into the economy. The federal government will provide $22 million of the funding while the remaining $35 million will come from the government of Ontario. The funds will be allocated to 70 existing and new projects in Ontario to provide “bridge training”, a term that encompasses training, Canadian work experience and assistance in getting licensed or certified to work in Canada, to new immigrants.

Vancouver Trails Toronto as Canada’s Most Expensive City, but Canada still Cheap on International Stage

Tokyo overtook Luanda, Angola as the world's most expensive city this year

The latest annual Worldwide Cost of Living Survey by human resource firm Mercer places Toronto as Canada’s most expensive city, ahead of Vancouver, for the second year in a row. Both cities are relatively cheap by international standards though, placing 61st and 63rd most expensive in the world, respectively. Ottawa has the lowest cost of living of Canadian cities included in the survey, ranking 115th globally.

The world’s three most expensive cities, in descending order, are Tokyo Japan, Luanda Angola, and Osaka Japan. Brazilian cities saw a drop in their place in the rankings due to depreciation of the Brazilian currency, the real, while New Zealand’s Auckland and Wellington, and Australian cities like Sydney, climbed in the rankings as the New Zealand and Australian dollars appreciated.

Mercer says that Canada’s cost of living has been relatively stable over the past several years, with little change in the price of items like rent and food, which is an attractive national quality for multinational corporations looking to place employees abroad.

Canadian-Gov Backed Website to Help Immigrants Find Jobs in Toronto Launched

The Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council (TRIEC) has launched a new online network, www.networksforimmigrants.ca, to help Canadian immigrants find jobs.

The website will make pre-existing networks of professional Canadian immigrants easily accessible to employers in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) through a search feature and a directory.

The website is part of an initiative, called PINs (Professional Immigrant Networks), that started in 2009, to help immigrants, whose unemployment rate of 8.4% is above that of native born Canadians of  5.4%, connect to employers.

The initiative has received $100,000 in funding from Citizenship and Immigration Canada and from Scotiabank through a sponsorship agreement.

TRIEC hopes to expand its website to other regions of Canada to make it a national job network for immigrants.