BC Cities Improve Rankings in Entrepreneurial Communities Index

October 19, 2015

CANADA – According to the 2015 Entrepreneurial Communities Report from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), BC is now home to eight of the top 30 cities in the annual rankings of Canada’s best places to start and grow a business.

“Its great to see so many of the province’s cities be recognized as relatively good places to own and operate a business. Specifically, a tip of the hat goes to Penticton and Kelowna. On the policy side, however, there’s still work to do to make more BC communities small business friendly,” says Richard Truscott, Vice President, BC and Alberta.

The annual study assesses which cities have best enabled small businesses to start, grow, and prosper. The report looks at the entrepreneurial environment in 121 of the most populous municipalities (roughly 20,000 people or more) across Canada, according to information drawn from published and custom tabulated Statistics Canada sources, as well as survey research conducted with CFIB members.

The 2015 study covers 14 indicators grouped into three areas: presence, perspective, and policy.  Presence covers the scale and growth of business ownership, perspective measures optimism and growth plans, and policy represents the actions local governments take with respect to business taxation and regulation. Scores in those three major categories are combined and weighted to provide an overall score and ranking.

As a result of data availability issues from StatsCan, the study separates the metro areas of Canada’s largest cities, including Vancouver, from all the surrounding municipal areas and ranks each. 
For 2015, Penticton and Kelowna jumped up the list into second and third spot (up from 20th and 15th respectively in 2014).

The 2015 Top 10 Overall Ranking:

  1. Calgary periphery, AB (the combined municipalities of Airdrie, Rocky View, Cochrane, and Chestermere)
  2. Penticton, BC
  3. Kelowna, BC
  4. Grande Prairie, AB
  5. Collingwood, ON
  6. Okotoks, AB
  7. Brooks, AB
  8. Edmonton periphery, AB (the combined municipalities of Strathcona County, St. Albert, Parkland, Spruce Grove, Leduc, and several smaller municipalities)
  9. Lloydminster, AB
  10. Swift Current, SK

The 2015 overall ranking for the other BC cities on the list of 121 municipalities are as follows (2014 ranking in brackets): Salmon Arm 12th (28th), Chilliwack 16th (16th), Prince George 25th (33rd), Parksville 28th (44th), Vernon 29th (32nd), Vancouver periphery (the Greater Vancouver Regional Dictrict excluding the City of Vancouver) 30th (63rd), Nanaimo 39th (76th), Kamloops 46th (49th), Abbotsford-Mission 47th (54th), Victoria 53rd (78th), Campbell River 55th (57th), Quesnel 61st (65th), Fort St. John 69th (40th), Port Alberni 87th (69th), Courtenay 83rd (111th), City of Vancouver 94th (101st), and Cranbrook 100th (112th).   
“Although many BC cities perform relatively well in this report, mayors and councils across the province still have work to do to cut red tape and make property taxes fairer for small business. They must not become complacent. On the other hand, the City of Vancouver clearly needs to do a lot of heavy-lifting to improve both their policy score and their overall ranking,” concludes Truscott.

– CFIB is Canada’s largest association of small- and medium-sized businesses with 109,000 members across every sector and region. The full CFIB Entrepreneurial Communities Report is available at www.cfib.ca.

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