In 2010, Ottawa-Gatineau reclaims the spot it held in 2007 and 2008. (Emily Chung/CBC)

Ottawa and nearby Gatineau, Que., are Canada's most livable community, says a report by MoneySense magazine.

The Toronto-based personal finance publication says its study of 179 Canadian cities with populations of more than 10,000 puts the country's capital and its nearby suburb at the top on the list for livability.

The study in the magazine's latest issue, available this week, looked at everything from a city's prosperity, affordability, weather and lifestyles in determining the rankings.

That means household incomes, housing prices, jobs and local health and social services factored into the evaluation, Sarah Efron, the magazine's managing editor, said in an interview Thursday.

"The idea is not to look at things a tourist would look at such as how pretty the city is," said Efron.

"The idea is to look at things that impact livability, things like weather and housing prices, jobs, income and health care — those sort of measures."

Following Ottawa-Gatineau on the list were the Ontario cities of Kingston and Burlington and the New Brunswick communities of Fredericton and Moncton.

Rounding out the top 10 were Repentigny, a community north of Montreal, Brandon, Man., Victoria, Winnipeg and Lévis, Que., a city across the St. Lawrence River from Quebec City.

Victoria, last year's No. 1 most livable city, fell to eighth this year, mainly because of skyrocketing housing prices in the B.C. capital.

Calgary ranked 27th, Vancouver 29th, Toronto 85th and Montreal 120th, said the magazine.

Housing prices were a key factor to livability as well as diversified economies with government, military or other public-sector employment that helped offset the impact of last year's recession, said Efron.

"Basically we found that in general, cities that were somewhat recession-proof did well this year."

Efron said Canada's biggest cities — Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver — were far down the list because of the high cost of housing in those communities.

"What you see is that the cities you think of as the big, exciting cool cities — [are further down the list] when you really look across the board at livability. Toronto, Vancouver are great places to live but you do sacrifice something by living there, which is this overall, across the board dollars-and-cents evaluation of things."

Ottawa-Gatineau topped the list in both 2007 and 2008.