Saskatoon ranked No. 2 overall in a Maclean's magazine study of municipal services across Canada. (CBC)

Cities in western Canada out-performed the rest of the country in a national newsmagazine's examination of municipal services and value per tax dollar.

Maclean's magazine, which has attracted attention in the past for its annual rankings of universities, delved into local government for its current issue and determined that the best-run city in Canada is Burnaby, B.C.

Indeed, medium-sized cities dominated the top slots of the magazine's study, which looked at a long list of civic services, from snow removal to recreational facilities and evaluated them based on objective criteria.

'Saskatoon did fabulously.'—Patricia Treble, Maclean's reporter

"What surprised me the most," said Patricia Treble, one of reporters who worked on the package of articles, "it was the medium-sized cities that did so well."

Treble expected smaller communities would be in a better position to out-perform larger centres.

"Actually, a lot of the small cities didn't do well," she told CBC News on Friday. "Fredericton, Kingston and Charlottetown are right at the bottom."

Treble said the magazine engaged a Halifax-based think-tank, the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, to collect and organize civic data for the rankings.

Treble said she was impressed that Saskatoon ranked as high as it did.

“When I saw Saskatoon was No. 2, I kind of thought, ‘that’s cool,’” Treble said. “Saskatoon did fabulously.”

One of the main measures used in the study was taxation. Treble said many cities fared poorly because of their relatively high tax bills. As an example, Treble cited Ottawa, which ranked number 16.

“It’s had a reputation for great services,” Treble said of the nation’s capital, “but it comes at a very high cost. Their property taxes are really, really high.”

'We pay a lot of attention to quality of life issues.'—Murray Totland, Saskatoon city manager

Treble said the top-ranked cities were able to deliver a range of services for reasonable costs.

"They've figured it out," Treble said. "They figured out how to be both efficient and effective, and I think everyone can take a lesson from that.”

Here are the magazine's top 10 cities:

1. Burnaby, B.C.
2. Saskatoon
3. Surrey, B.C.
4. Vancouver
5. Longueil, Que.
6. Sherbrooke, Que.
7. London, Ont.
8. Saint John
9. Quebec City
10. Toronto

“We pay a lot of attention to quality of life issues,” Murray Totland, Saskatoon's city manager, told CBC News on Friday. “We try and balance the pressures of growth and economic development with providing those quality of life programs and services.”

Totland has been a Saskatoon city employee for 27 years, but only recently was named to the municipality's top administrative position.

“There are pressures,” Totland said about delivering services at a reasonable cost to taxpayers. He said the Maclean’s rankings demonstrate how cities need different revenue streams.

“Having to rely on the property tax as the main source of finance and funding,... it’s becoming more and more apparent that that model is just not sufficient to provide all the different activities and services that our citizens want."