Planning to Work Remotely from Canada? Here’s Everything You Need to Know

With excellent salaries and career prospects, Canada has become a hot spot for remote working. Here are practical tips on how to make it work for you.

Whether it’s more flexibility or finally saying goodbye to the morning commute, more and more workers are demanding remote work options worldwide.

Canada has positioned itself as a remote work haven to meet this vast demand and attract the top tier of talent. Developing infrastructure and government initiatives have helped speed along this transition tremendously.

So, if you’re considering working remotely in Canada, this article will guide you through everything you need to know. It will explain why Canada has become a trendsetter and offer simple but effective tips to maximize your success.

Why are more Canadians working remotely?

There are many reasons why remote working makes sense in Canada, both for employers and employees.

Firstly, it has enormous government support. The recent ‘Digital Nomad’ program allows overseas workers to work in Canada for up to six months without a work permit. This alone has utterly transformed the Canadian jobs market, where businesses can attract top talent regardless of location, and workers can contribute to Canadian businesses without needing to relocate immediately.

Canadians are themselves very open to remote work, too. Research from consulting firm Robert Half has found that up to 85% of workers have shown interest in both hybrid and remote positions. In their snapshot of the jobs market, they found the rate of remote jobs in Canada for October reached 37.5%.

As well as attracting jobs in Canada, remote working has allowed Canadians to apply for higher-paid salaries in other countries, such as the US or Europe. So long as workers continue to pay their respective income tax, remote working allows Canadians to improve their income and not be penalized for working at home.

Four tips on remote working in Canada

Despite their popularity, remote work isn’t all it’s cracked up to be—at least at the start. You need to keep some important things in mind to ensure your safety. These include:

1. Educate yourself against phishing attacks and job scams

To work remotely in Canada, you must learn about the rising threats online, including phishing and recruitment scams.

Phishing is when a hacker pretends to be someone they aren’t, like a trusted person or a service. They aim to build trust with you quickly and trick you into doing something out of character, like sharing sensitive information or downloading malicious files.

Because of the growing popularity of remote working, hackers often run fake recruitment scams to trick remote workers on networking sites.

When job-hunting, remember to:

• Examine the company’s website. Does it reflect the job being advertised? Do they have a good reputation in the industry?

• Be wary of jobs with low barriers for entry—ones that don’t ask for interviews or references and may seem ‘too good to be true.’

• Avoid downloading any files or clicking links from unknown senders when applying.

• Hide private information like your date of birth, address, and contact emails from your public profile.

• Never send money to a recruiter for ‘processing’ or ‘VISA’ fees.

• Before accepting a connection or engaging in conversation, examine the recruiter’s profile thoroughly, including the quality of information and how long they’ve been working with the company.

2. Use a virtual private network (VPN)

A VPN is an essential cybersecurity tool for working from home and using the internet in general. It encrypts your internet connection, making it impossible for hackers to know what you’re doing online.

But a VPN has an additional benefit for remote workers—a dedicated IP address. This is when a VPN assigns your computer a unique IP address that identifies it from every other device.

A business can approve your IP address, allowing you (and only you) access to anything you might need for your work. This ensures you can perform all your duties at home without leaving your business vulnerable.

And because a VPN can protect you on any network, including public Wi-Fi hotspots, you’ll be allowed to work from anywhere in Canada, at home, the airport, a café, or more—with total peace of mind!

3. Update all of your technology

Hackers devise new attacks that exploit old technology in our homes and workplaces daily. And although developers might have released security patches to help defend against cyberattacks, these are meaningless unless downloaded and installed.

Research from 2021 found that 61% of security vulnerabilities found on corporate networks dated back to 2016—or even older. These vulnerabilities resulted in ransomware attacks, as well as password theft.

To counteract this, you must ensure all of your technology at home is regularly updated. Where possible, enable automatic installation of updates. Remember to update all your devices, including your PC, software, and smartphone, as well as any accessories like your router, webcam, microphone drivers, and more.

4. Study the company incident response plan thoroughly

If you’ve got a remote job in Canada and are looking at ways to prepare yourself, you should ask to see and study the company’s incident response plan.

This important document will help explain what you should do before, during, and after a suspected cyberattack. In particular, find out the following:

• How often is the plan updated? How often are staff retrained?

• How do you report an issue, and to whom?

• What should staff say to outside personnel during a potential breach?

By being aware of how your business treats cyberattacks, you can understand your role better, be proactive, and respond quickly and effectively. This will not only help contain the threat but also help mitigate potential damage while working remotely.

Why 2024 Will Be Another Massive Year for Esports

Esports continues to grow in popularity and there’s no sign of their rise coming to an end anytime soon. Betting on them at sites such as Twin.com Esports has also seen a boom and there are many reasons why this has been the case.

It’s not an easy task to take a new form of sport and build its popularity. Esports has achieved this in recent years. 2024 should be another big year with some massive events already confirmed.

Esports have been included among the demonstration sports at Olympic Games. They were well received but the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics won’t be seeing them become one of the main sports. That’s disappointing considering the popularity of Esports and looking at some of the sports that are included. 

The Olympic movement is still aware of the growing popularity of Esports. So much that they are considering an Olympic Esports Games.

When it comes to betting, the bookmakers need to be convinced that it is worth their time to be offering odds. There seems little point in them doing so if that isn’t so.

The growth in their popularity began to convince them that offering odds was an idea to consider. Another huge factor was the massive amounts of prize money on offer at top events. The bookmakers realized that this was far more than people playing computer games.

Then came another event that boosted the presence of Esports on betting sites. The COVID-19 pandemic affected us all in many ways. It wasn’t good news for the sporting calendar with many major events canceled or moved to another date when the world was a bit safer.

Bookmakers suddenly found themselves short of sporting events to offer odds on and of course make revenue from. Esports proved to be a replacement for the other sports events that weren’t taking place and filled the holes in their sporting calendar.

There was also increased media coverage and this also led to Esports being even more popular. Since the end of the pandemic the increased presence and popularity of Esports as part of online gaming has continued.

Big cash prizes can be won if successful in the many Esports leagues that are now played around the world. Just a glance at the events for which online bookmakers offer odds show just how global the sport has become.

2024 is going to be a year when all over the world there will be hugely popular events and leagues such as Dota and League of Legends being held. Esports has arrived both as a popular sport and also one that online gamblers love trying to get wins from.