Keeping with the changing times, Macleans Magazine has ranked the best communities in Canada to live and to work remotely.
The ranking assumes remote work is here to stay, so it added Internet access to the more traditional categories like weather, crime severity, housing affordability, and access to healthcare. The magazine partnered with Environics Analytics and the Canadian Internet Registration Authority to measure which communities are best suited to working from home and for general quality of life.
In calculating how many people in a home can work on a single internet connection, Macleans estimated the average download speed was 25 megabits per second.
What the ranking did not take into account was the local economy since remote workers are not tied to employment within their community
Downtown Windsor on October 1, 2015. (Photo by Ricardo Veneza)
Windsor came in 16th in the ranking. For a decade, the city has held property tax increases to zero per cent and a homeowner with an average income can expect to pay 2.3 per cent in those costs. The city is also the warmest spot in the ranking with 139 days with temperatures in excess of 20 C. For every 100,000 residents, there are 419 doctors and 14 people in one household can get by on one internet connection.
St. Thomas ranked the highest on the list of Southwestern Ontario communities with its property taxes taking just a 2.3 per cent bite out of the average income and low crime severity index of 51. There are 128 warm days a year, and 15 people can get by on one internet connection. It came in third place beat only by Fredericton, New Brunswick and Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Toronto also made the list, placing 11th.
Macleans looked at 415 communities across the country.