Categories: Lifestyle

Four Canadian cities make list of best places to live & work in the world

Photo via Shutterstock

We’ll admit that 2020 wasn’t exactly the best year for work across the board. It seemed like people were either prevented from working altogether or having to work harder than usual to accommodate changes. So, we’re particularly interested to see the list of the best work-life balance cities in the world for 2021. Let’s check it out!

The list comes from Kisi, which mainly does keyless entry systems for companies, weirdly enough. However, they had a similar list back in 2019, and have updated it for the present day. What does that mean? Well, this year’s data includes things like how good a city is for remote work, or how the city might support workers during times of crisis- new kinds of time off, relief and benefit payments, and so on…

Image via Kisi

The result is a pretty robust set of 18 factors, ranging from air quality to access to mental health services to the unemployment rate. To get their rankings, Kisi pulled data from a ton of different sources, ranging from the OECD to Gallup Polls to the World Health Organization. And basically, the point of the list is to highlight cities that can offer a healthy balance to those working there, thanks to local amenities and public policies.

So, let’s see where Canadian cities landed on the list! We used their rankings out of the top 50, and the score is out of 100.

6. Ottawa- 89.1
8. Vancouver- 87.8
13. Calgary- 85.2
14. Toronto- 84.9

Well, it’s nice to see that we got our share of the pie, and all within the top 15! There were a few factors that Canada is near the top of the heap in, like paid parental leave, COVID-19 support, and healthcare. Toronto came 5th in the happiness factor, and Ottawa landed 2nd for outdoor spaces. Finally, Ottawa and Calgary actually took the top 2 spots for air quality.

On the flipside, Canada is actually near the bottom of the list when it comes to vacation days, offering just two weeks (10 days) as a minimum. In comparison, Oslo, Helsinki, Stockholm and Copenhagen (all in the top 5) offer a whopping 5 weeks (25 days) as a minimum.

So, we’re asking the federal government- can we have a little extra vacation time? As a treat?