Living

While economic growth, income, and employment are important metrics in tracking a city’s success, so too are satisfaction, well-being, and all the things that make life easier and more enjoyable. Halifax’s new economic strategy for 2022-27 has explicitly included well-being as a top-level indicator of success.

As a means of better incorporating the concept of inclusion, the specific well-being measure named as a headline metric in the new economic strategy is the share of survey respondents who report a low score when asked about their satisfaction with life. The benchmark share from the 2022 City Matters Survey carried out by MQO Research is 14.4%, and the goal is to reduce this share every year.

The City Matters Survey also asked respondents to rate their satisfaction with various aspects of living in Halifax. Over three-quarters of respondents said they were satisfied or very satisfied with life here. Halifax as a place for recreation and play, to raise a family, and retire received a satisfaction share over 70%. The share of respondents satisfied with Halifax as a place to work and as a place for young people were between 65% and 70%.

In this year’s Index, there also is a mapping tool allowing users to see a variety of facilities throughout the municipality. These include educational, health care, arts, culture, recreation, and sports infrastructure. Proximity and access to such facilities can be important contributors to quality of life, and this tool makes it easy to visualize the presence or absence of facilities in any given area.

Transit usage cratered in 2020-21 as COVID-19 kept people in their homes, but there was a rebound in 2021-22. Halifax Transit increased its hours of operation in 2021-22 by 13.7%, which represents 111,597 hours more than the 2020-21 total. The total of 927,223 hours of operation is the most recorded in Halifax Transit’s history. This increase was driven by new bus routes added to increase community connectedness. Ridership also saw a big jump from the slump of 2020-21, growing by 60.5% or 5.1 million rides. Although this was the largest annual growth ever seen, the total ridership of 13.4 million remains well below the high of 20.6 million rides set in 2019-20.

Halifax has the lowest fares for senior and youth riders across benchmark cities, along with the lowest average monthly fare. Halifax’s single fare is the third lowest across benchmark cities, $0.25 above St. John’s and Victoria.

High ridership does not always correlate with improved satisfaction. However, residents’ satisfaction with the public transit system (conventional bus and ferry) has improved substantially since 2019. The share of riders who were very satisfied increased by 4.2 percentage points and those who were satisfied increased by 15.8 percentage points between 2019 and 2021. The increase in satisfaction was mirrored by a decrease in the share of those dissatisfied or very dissatisfied (-20 percentage points) over the same period.

Trust in others and in institutions, participation in democracy, and inclusive representation are all indicators of civic health.

The 2022 City Matters Survey asked questions about levels of trust among Halifax residents. When asked if most people in the community could be trusted, 59% of respondents replied positively. Males (69%) reported a much higher feeling of trust than did females (50%). Additionally, as has been the case since 2018, older and rural respondents were more likely to state that they trust others in the community.

Election turnout varies from federal (higher turnout) to provincial (medium) to municipal (lower) elections, and Halifax has experienced reasonably consistent turnout rates over the last decade.

Federal elections held in 2021 had a decreased voter turnout rate of 62.5% (-15.5 percentage points from the previous federal election). However, the 2021 provincial turnout rate, at 55.7%, was 2.4 percentage points higher than in 2017.

Halifax elects 48 representatives²across all three levels of government and currently, 42% (20) of the representatives elected are female, an increase of 5 percentage points from last year. Male representatives make up 58% of the representatives. The share of Black representatives and representatives of other visible minority status are 10% and 13%, respectively. There are no Indigenous representatives.

Health care in Halifax (and indeed throughout Nova Scotia)³has had to adapt in the face of a global pandemic, including new variants of COVID-19 and significantly higher case counts than the province experienced in 2020. The share of people in Halifax over the age of 65 continues to rise, albeit more slowly than before. These factors have put a strain on the health care system, leading to longer waitlists and issues of access to primary care physicians. The province still struggles to achieve comparable health outcomes to other provinces though Nova Scotians are more likely to participate in activities that have positive health outcomes such as COVID-19 vaccination, influenza vaccination, and physical activity.

Nova Scotia was among the quickest provinces to get vaccinated against COVID-19. As of January 1, 2022 over 81% of Nova Scotia’s adults had been fully vaccinated,⁴with 88% of Nova Scotians receiving at least one dose of a vaccine. Looking at the country as a whole, 77% of adults were fully vaccinated by the start of 2022, with 83% receiving at least one dose.

Nova Scotia’s high vaccination rates also extend to immunization against influenza. More Nova Scotians got their flu immunization in 2020 than any other province, with 56.5% getting a vaccination, up from 49.4% in the year prior. This rate is well above the Canadian average of 39.0%.

The most frequent way Nova Scotians interact with the health care system is through their primary care physician or other regular health care provider. The share of Nova Scotians who had access to a regular health care provider increased to 87.8% in 2020, up from 85.6% in 2019. This coincides with the decreasing waitlist sizes reported in last year’s Index.

However, in 2021, the size of waitlists increased both in Halifax¹and across the province. Between December 2020 and December 2021, an additional 12,688 people in Halifax were added to the waitlist. This increased the share of the city’s population⁵on the waitlist from 2.1% to 5.2%.

To improve access, the Province is innovating its approaches to health care. Just over 19,000 Nova Scotians (or 22% of the province’s total waitlist) have registered with the VirtualCareNS Program – a virtual primary care clinic that provides care to those waiting for a primary care physician.

In 2020, Nova Scotians reported much higher rates of chronic health conditions, well above other provinces and the Canadian average. In terms of arthritis, diabetes, asthma, COPD,⁶high blood pressure, and mood disorders, Nova Scotians report at a higher rate than Canadians as a whole. This is most noticeable in terms of arthritis, where 26.2% of Nova Scotians experience the condition compared to 19.1% of Canadians. Mood disorders are another category where a much larger share of Nova Scotians (16.2%) report conditions compared to other Canadians (9.0%).

Compared to other provinces containing benchmark cities, Nova Scotia has the highest rates for asthma (12.1%), COPD (7.6%), and mood disorders (16.2%). While Newfoundland and Labrador has the highest rates for most of the other chronic health conditions in the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS), Nova Scotia is the second highest in its rates of arthritis (26.2%), diabetes (9.7%), and high blood pressure (20.7%). All of these figures are higher than their respective national averages.

In 2020, Nova Scotians were in the middle of the pack in terms of their perceptions of their health, mental health, and overall life satisfaction. The CCHS asks Canadians to rate their own health and reports the share who respond with “very good” or “excellent.” Among the six provinces with a benchmark city, Nova Scotia was fourth in terms of physical health (61.7%), third in terms of mental health (66.5%), and last in terms of life satisfaction (91.7%).

Halifax continues to see a downward trend in crime and compares well to benchmark cities in terms of the Crime Severity Index (CSI)⁷and the Violent Crime Severity Index (VCSI).⁸The CSI and VCSI are published by Statistics Canada and measure the incidence and severity of crimes across Canadian cities.

The most recent CSI statistics (2020) show that Halifax has a score of 61.9, up from 60.9 in 2019. Except for 2019, this is the lowest CSI value the city has seen since recordkeeping began in 1998. This represents a drop of 35.9 points since 2010, the largest decline across benchmark cities over that period.

The VCSI score for Halifax in 2020 was 83.8, down 0.3 points from 2019. The decline since 2010 was 23.0 points, the second largest across benchmark cities. The 2020 score was the third lowest ever recorded, behind the 2016 (82.0) and 2014 (75.1) values.

The environment and climate change are top-of-mind issues in Halifax.

HalifACT, the municipality's comprehensive climate action plan, boasts ambitious goals: reducing community greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 75% between 2016 and 2030 and a net-zero goal by 2050. The largest source of GHG emissions in Halifax is the residential sector (1.44 MtCO2e in 2020) followed by institutional/commercial emitters (1.07 MtCO2e).

Halifax’s waste-diversion rate saw a slight decline in 2021, falling to 58% (-2 percentage points). At the same time, the waste disposal rate per capita increased by 6 kg to reach 370 kg per capita. Halifax has goals of 100% waste diversion by 2050 and a waste-disposal rate of 300 kg per capita by 2030.

Nova Scotia’s renewable energy supply has tripled over the last decade, with the 29% share in 2021 holding steady from 2020. In 2021, 47% of the province’s energy still came from coal while 16% came from natural gas and oil. The remaining 8% was imported.