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OUR VIEW:Magazine’s ranking is pure bunk

There are so many subjective factors in livability

Let’s be clear about something: MoneySense’s ranking of Canada’s best places to live is bunk. Sure, Campbell River ranked 174th out of the magazine’s 179-place ranking. That doesn’t mean we’re the fifth worst place to live in Canada. That’s ridiculous.

According to the magazine’s criteria, we’re the fifth-worst ranked community of the 179 they ranked. There are more than 5,000 municipalities in Canada. Certainly, some of those might be “better” than Campbell River, depending on your criteria but there are going to be many “worse.” Headlines screaming worst place in Canada as determined by a magazine desperate for better circulation figures are, as we all know if we sit down and think it through, misleading.

Can you honestly say that someone with a house on the Campbell River foreshore overlooking beautiful Discovery Passage and the northern Gulf Islands is in a worse-off situation than a homeless person in East Vancouver (Vancouver placed 29th in the MoneySense article)? It’s completely subjective and it’s obvious that living in any one of the cities listed in the magazine’s article is better than many (most?) places in the world.

So bully for MoneySense, they found a way to get everybody talking about their magazine just like the Fraser Institute manages to get everyone talking about their right wing think tank when they release the debatable B.C. school rankings and Maclean’s tries to get some notice with its university rankings. It’s a circulation or publicity ploy.

The magazine article can have some value if it gets Campbell Riverites talking about what can we do to make our community better. We have some issues to deal with as we adapt to the post-Elk Falls Mill era. It’s going to be tough but we’ll come out ahead because...this is a nice place to live.

– Campbell River Mirror