QUALITY OF LIFE INDICATORS
An integral part of community planning is the assurance that County residents (and others) maintain and enhance their quality of life while in Sturgeon County. A good Quality of life framework is an important tool in promoting sustainable community planning at the local level. As such, QOL is important in bringing together the social, environmental, and economic aspects. The unprecedented level of industrial interest and activity that has occurred in the County in the past three years has placed increased demands on ensuring that quality of life monitoring is implemented.
The intent of this Area Structure Plan is not to carry out a Quality of Life assessment, but rather to provide the next set of policy directions to support the development of a detailed Quality of Life framework for Sturgeon County. It is recommended that the Quality of Life framework form part of the Community Enhancement work that Sturgeon County will carry out in the 2007-2008 time frame.
The Quality of Life framework recommended follows the Federation of Canadian Municipalities reporting system and implementation is intended to:
Quality of Life indicators should be understandable and used by all stakeholders in the community. The measures should be:
Used on a consistent basis, Quality of Life measures and indicators can provide warning of degradation in the quality of life and more importantly can set assist in setting targets to enhance the quality of life for those throughout Sturgeon County and beyond.
The Quality of Life measures used by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities include the following:
1. Population Resources Measures (PRM):
This is a profile of population characteristics, population growth, education and literacy levels, cultural diversity, immigration and the age structure of the population. It provides a basis for the monitoring of long-term demographic changes.
2. Community Affordability Measures (CAM):
These measures compare levels of income with the cost of living. A higher affordability measure (CAM) occurs when average incomes are relatively higher than average costs of living.
3. Quality of Employment Measures (QEM):
These measures monitor employment dimensions and trends, such as equity and the distribution of employment, partial employment and unemployment among population groups.
4. Quality of Housing Measures (QOHM):
These measures include the affordability of housing to rent (relative to prevailing incomes), percentage of homes in need of repair, vacancy rates and housing starts.
5. Community Stress Measures (CSM):
These measures reflect social problems and they examine variables related to vulnerable groups. They include the incidence of low income, the incidence of lone-parent families, and the incidence of crisis calls, bankruptcies and suicides.
6. Health of Community Measures (HOCM):
These measures reflect the rate of premature deaths (before age 75), infant mortality, the percentage of babies born with low birth weights, and workdays lost due to illness or disability.
7. Community Safety Measures (CSFM):
These measures reflect rates of crime and violence, youth crime, and the rate of unintended injuries.
8. Community Participation Measures (CPM):
These measures reflect the involvement of citizens in their community, and include political participation (voter turnout), daily newspaper circulation, charitable giving and support for community projects as measured by contributions to the annual United Way campaign.