What are the best places for business in Canada?

How do you go about picking the country’s best place to do business? Every company will have its own criteria for a desirable location, after all. A retail outlet dependent on a local clientele will do best in a community with high incomes and a rising population. An exporter, by contrast, will favour cost advantages such as cheap space and power.

Organizations requiring specialized skills may need to be near a big city or university, or offer an appealing lifestyle. All enterprises, though, benefit from access to appropriately qualified workers, moderate taxation and a minimum of red tape.

Read: Canada’s financial centres could rise to global prominence

Advisor’s sister publication, PROFITguide, has the answer. PROFIT’s Best Places for Business survey highlights the Canadian cities that strike an optimal balance between prosperous markets, reasonable costs and business-friendly taxation and regulation.

Using a combination of public and proprietary market data and survey responses from some 60 municipalities with populations of 15,000 or more, PROFIT awarded each city scores on factors such as the cost of office space, the speed of processing a building permit and the percentage of residents holding a university degree.

In addition to listing the overall winners, the magazine has broken out sub-lists of the Most Affordable cities (those with the lowest costs, such as rents and electricity), the Most Business-Friendly (those with amenable local government) and the Most Lucrative (which have well-off and growing populations). The chart-toppers are just the start, though. For business owners and managers looking for the next place to hang out their shingle — or hold their existing location(s) up to comparative scrutiny — it’s collected a wealth of information on 219 communities, which you can access here.

The places that made the top-25 list will surprise you. It’s not dominated by Canada’s financial centres, as one might expect. Advisors with practices in Barrie, Ont., Squamish, B.C., St. John’s, Nfld. and many points in between will nod in recognition when they see their home towns touted on the list.

For the full ranking, including the most business-friendly place to work, see PROFITguide’s full ranking.

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