Christina Montgomery, Vancouver Observer

Until very recently, B.C. was The Best Place on Earth. Officially.

No one’s quite sure who retired our title, but a report this month by the Business Council of B.C. offers up a few reasons why it was a good idea to ditch the slogan.

In it, Jock Finlayson, the council’s executive vice-president for policy, has assembled material from Statistics Canada that paints a less-than-flattering picture of the province.

He notes, among other things….

* Although the third-place position sounds good, it also turns out that families in B.C. rely more on government transfers — also known as social assistance — as a source of income than in Saskatchewan and Alberta, although less than in other provinces than those two.

* And when you drill down farther, you find that there are more B.C. families classified as “low-income” than in the rest of Canada (8.9 per cent in B.C. in 2009, versus a national average of 6.5 per cent). “The above average share of low income families in B.C. – which also translates into relatively high rates of reported child poverty – continues to be a cause for concern,” Finlayson says.

* Finally, the Vancouver region is quite “poor” compared to other urban regions in Canada, with a median total family income of just $67,550, below the average for all cities. In 2009, Greater Vancouver ranked 22nd out of 33 Canadian CMAs on the core indicator of economic well-being, the report says. That’s inpart because of the large number of immigrants, who tend to make lower incomes, it adds….