Traffic congestion and cold winters put Toronto slightly behind Vancouver in a global ranking of the cities with the highest quality of life, an annual survey by Mercer found.

But both cities scored in the top 20 most livable cities in the world, ranking ahead of such major centres as New York, Paris and London, Mercer’s 2016 Quality of Life Survey found.

“Every year, when I look at the rankings and the underlying data, it reminds me we've got it pretty good in Canada,” Gordon Frost, leader of Mercer’s talent business in Canada, said in an interview. “Once you get to the top 20 cities globally the differences between them are very, very minor. It's varying degrees of excellence.”

Globally, Vancouver came in fifth while Toronto ranked 15th, out of 230 cities in the survey released Tuesday. In comparison, New York ranked 44th, Paris was 71st and London was 72nd.

Western European cities dominated the list of most desirable places in the live, led by Vienna and Zurich, ranked 1st and 2nd. Cities in Africa and the Middle East scored the lowest on the overall quality of living index, led by Baghdad and Bangui.

The survey by the human resources consulting firm is used by employers to determine how much extra to pay employees while on international assignments.

“You may need to cover the cost of private school if there's no good schooling available locally or if you need extra security because it’s not safe to live there,” Frost said. “Mercer has data on a city by city basis. If you're sending someone to Baghdad what's the cost compared to other cities.”

He declined to provide specific dollar amounts saying it varies widely and some elements are difficult to quantify. For example, how much do you have to pay to get someone to go to a remote mine in Africa?

“Right now we're getting a lot of questions from clients, given that oil and gas and other natural resources are not doing well, how that’s impacting hardship premiums. Are companies offering less now?”

Mercer also advises cities how to improve their quality of life rankings to make them more attractive as a place to do business.

“For a lot of non-Canadian cities, that means improving public security or social services or access to education or clean water, things we take for granted,” Frost noted.

Toronto already offers all that and more, including access to good restaurants, sports facilities, consumer goods and media, he noted. “We live in a large multinational city that’s very desirable.

“Other than the traffic congestion which is something the government can change over time, there’s not much Toronto can do about the climate,” he said.

Safety considerations can have a significant impact on the cost of sending employees abroad, the Mercer survey noted.

Luxembourg topped the personal safety list followed by Bern, Helsinki and Zurich. Cities such as Paris, London and Athens had slipped considerably after suffering terrorist attacks or social unrest. The least safe cities were Baghdad and Damascus.

Canadian cities all ranked high for personal safety, with Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver sharing 16th place globally. No U.S. city made it into the top 50.

Mexican cities ranked relatively low because of drug-related violence, while some Latin America and Caribbean cities are less safe now due to rising unemployment, economic weakness and political instability.

The Quality of Living analysis was conducted between September and November 2015, Mercer said.

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Best & worst places to live

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Top 5 cities:

Vienna, Austria

Zurich, Switzerland

Auckland, New Zealand

Munich, Germany

Vancouver, Canada

Bottom 5 cities:

226. Khartoum, Sudan

227. Port-au-Prince, Haiti

228. Sana’a, Yemen

229. Bangui, Central African Republic

230. Baghdad, Iraq

Source: Mercer 2016 Quality of Living Survey

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