Guelph has been ranked as the fourth best major city in Canada to start and grow a business.
That's up two spots from last year.
The rankings are put out by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, a 40-year-old organization that represents the country's 109,000 small businesses and entrepreneurs.
Kelowna, B.C., was rated as the top major city (population over 150,000) in the 9th annual rankings.
Canadian cities were measured based on the three categories: presence, perspective and policy.
Guelph Chamber of Commerce President Kithio Mwanzia said the ranking is a credit to Guelph's cooperative eco system of business support.
He said surveys done every year to see what businesses need is "beginning to bear fruit."
"This has been an important work in progress for the city. One of the biggest things the economic development eco system has done is making sure our business retention and expansion capacity is extremely high. That includes all of the players in the eco system," Mwanzia said.
The Chamber of Commerce, Innovation Guelph, Guelph Wellington Small Business Centre, University of Guelph and Centre for Business and Student Enterprise all work cooperatively to attract, keep and grow business, Mwanzia said.
Everything from sharing resources, helping cut through red tape, bringing in speakers and sharing talent is done to make this a great city to do business in, the chamber president said.
"That's what we do really, really well in Guelph. We all know that there are specific program objectives that we need to work on together. That allows us to get this type of ranking," he said. "It's a one-window approach."
Mayor Cam Guthrie echoed Mwanzia's reasoning.
“This independent ranking confirms what those of us in Guelph have known for a long time – this city is a great place to start and grow a business,” the Mayor said in a press release.
“We have it all – location, skilled talent, affordability, and excellent business support networks. I often hear from local entrepreneurs that there truly is something special about Guelph.”
Guelph ranked third in Canada when it came to entrepreneurial perspective and 10th for entrepreneurial presence.
Guelph ranked behind Kelowna, Toronto periphery and Barrie.
"That suburban areas tend to score much higher than major urban core cities is no surprise," wrote Ted Mallett, the vice-president and chief economist at the CFIB. "The outer rings of major centres are usually better incubators of new businesses because of more accommodative public policy, lower relative costs and still-reasonably good access to large markets."
Guelph scored particularly well in the areas of business establishment growth, state of business and full-time hiring.
Mwanzia said that while the ranking is great, "while we celebrate this ranking, we can't take this as our final destination.
Improving the affordability of doing business in Guelph and compliance time from application to shovel in the ground "can always be improved" and are ways to "keep moving up the ladder," he said.
