Nathan VanderKlippe
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Feb 22/02) - In a sense, it's no real surprise: Yellowknife is the most expensive city to live in Canada.

What may be surprising is how much more expensive it is: the average Yellowknife single-family household pays $4,165 in property taxes and utility charges. That's 30 per cent higher than the Canadian average, and almost 40 per cent higher than Edmonton.

"We're number one, which in this case is not good," said Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce president Dave McPherson.

The figures come from a study done by the City of Edmonton. It compared the cost of taxes and municipal fees, including water, sewer, phone and power, in 18 Canadian municipalities. Of those, Yellowknife was by far the smallest and the most isolated: the most similar city in the study was Fredericton, New Brunswick, which at 46,000 is two-and-a half times as populous. In pure property taxes, the Yellowknife average was one dollar lower than the Canadian average of $1,031 per person, and about $90 higher than rates in Edmonton.

But in comparing the cost of services the survey found Yellowknife ahead by a mile: the average monthly utility charges for a single-family home in Yellowknife are almost double the national average, and about 65 per cent higher than Edmonton.

A fair comparison?

Figures like these always bring with them a spate of moaning about the cost of living in the North. But they should also point to larger questions: are there mitigating factors? Can Yellowknife ever be dollar-for-dollar competitive with Edmonton?

Some have answered yes to the first and no to the second.

For one thing, many people in the North are highly-paid for their labour. The wages for those in government and the mining industry are much higher than national averages.

The natural surroundings and friendliness of the city also draw people beyond simple economic equations. For a city of 18,000, Yellowknife is also endowed with more services than many other municipalities of comparable size: an arts centre, a museum, a pool, a curling rink and a pair of arenas.

"I think the people that focus on the cost of living as being the deciding factor for people living in Yellowknife are missing the mark," said Coun. Ben McDonald.

McPherson argued that those intangible benefits can only go so far.

"Are our costs going to be as low as, say in Edmonton?" he asked. "No, I don't think we'll ever get there, at least not in my lifetime. But you get to a certain point where people say, 'even though it is a good place to live ... it's just too damn expensive to live here, and we're not going to make that sacrifice'."

McPherson is calling on all levels of government to hold the line on taxes and municipal services, saying that existing prices are already so high that it is difficult to attract new people to Yellowknife.

It is worth noting that two of the services included in the study -- phone and electricity -- are not controlled by the city of Yellowknife.

Mayor Gord Van Tighem held out a little more hope for falling prices in Yellowknife. Initiatives like the Fort Providence Mackenzie River bridge can begin to reduce costs in the short-term he said.

Looking far to the future, he said Yellowknife is situated to become a "mainstream city," where costs are more comparable to the south.

The city is on major air routes and, he said, "if the warming trend continues, if people continue a Northern migration, if we continue to have job opportunities, certainly in a period of years we could become much more mainstream."