MoneySense drops Calgary to 19th in Best Places to Live in Canada ranking

MoneySense Magazine has released its list of best places to live in Canada, and Calgary has dropped dramatically.

Alberta's biggest city ranked as the second best place to live in Canada last year but is now number 19.

There were 209 communities included in the ranking, all of them had a population of more than 10,000 people. This year the Boucherville, Que., grabbed the top spot.

The magazine survey uses information from Statistics Canada and other information agencies.

It looks at 34 different categories including employment rates, housing, crime rates and access to health care.

"At lot of people are pointing to the oil being the reason for the slide we are seeing in Alberta," said the magazine's managing editor Mark Brown. "But in fact the oil prices and the economic pressures haven't really factored into the numbers yet."

He said it will be interesting to see how oil prices factor into next year's findings. He believes the Alberta's rapid growth is more likely the cause of the drop.

"That actually works against cities like Calgary, to a certain extent, where they just start to grow too fast," said Brown.

"And that starts to put pressure on cities in terms of their ability to provide health care, access to transit and it starts to filter into other areas of the city as well like housing prices."

He said Calgary is still in the top 25 and a little work could help boost the city's ranking, like getting access to more doctors as the population expands.