No, the reason why so many Ubisoft games are made in Canada(and other studios as well, take a walk around central montreal, there's tonnes of games studios there) is that the Canadian government is giving out massive subsidies to the game industry to grow it there(last I've heard it's literally half of every salary - an absolutely ridiculous amount of money). If you compare the cost of having an employee in Canada to most other places, Canada works out pretty cheap, and it's an attractive place to move to and live in, without the ridiculousness of the American immigration.

I’ve always thought it was interesting that video games are the only kind of software that’s often made outside big tech hubs - not to mention the only kind an ordinary person enjoys using enough to emulate!

Does Canada not subsidize other tech work? I’ve heard the pay at Blackberry was terrible for instance. The only good thing is that Canadians will be impressed if you call yourself a software engineer because they think you have an iron ring.

Ubisoft, specifically, versus some of the other companies has the interesting added factor that with their upper-management being primarily based in France it is useful to them to utilize countries/provinces that can also speak French.

Yea Ubisoft is a rather special case. And their montreal studios have actually long be lauded as a pretty good place to work if you're in the game industry.