Bill C-30 and 51 surveillance to begin with Ottawa bureaucrats?

Yikes!

Ottawa Canada's adultery capital, website finds; bored bureaucrats may be why

By Joanne Laucius
Thursday, march 22, 2012

AshleyMadison.com ranked Ottawa No. 1 for being the most "cheater friendly" city in Canada. (Photograph by LJ Film, Reuters)


OTTAWA — Ottawa is the most “cheater-friendly” city in Canada, according to a website that allows would-be adulterers to meet.

Ottawa is followed closely by Saskatoon and Calgary, says AshleyMadison.com.

The website’s founder and CEO Noel Biderman, says he’s not surprised Ottawa topped the list, although other senior staff at the company thought Montreal or Vancouver would. Biderman himself bet on Toronto. Although it is ninth on the list in Canada, it does not have significantly lower per-capita adultery than Ottawa, he says.

But it makes sense that Ottawa would have the highest per capita users of the website, says Biderman. Using data from third-party providers, AshleyMadison has tracked per capita use in the U.S. Since 2009, Washington D.C. has always been the top market.

“They are a million miles ahead of anyone else,” he says.

Biderman believes that government cities like Ottawa and Washington may provide demographic potential for adultery.

“Compared to the rest of Canada, I don’t know that Ottawa is boring. It’s a place for international people to come and go. There have even been spy scandals.”

He believes that higher levels of education, particularly for women, may also lead to a market for adultery.

So does involvement in politics.

“They’re risk-takers. Risk-takers are more predisposed to have affairs,” says Biderman.

The top 10 Canadian cities for cheating, according to AshleyMadison.com:

1. Ottawa
2. Saskatoon
3. Calgary
4. Edmonton
5. London, Ontario
6. Brampton, Ontario
7. Winnipeg
8. Hamilton
9. Toronto
10. Vancouver

As for the two western cities in the top three, Biderman was surprised Saskatoon beat out the typically high-ranking cities of Calgary and Edmonton.

“We have always done exceedingly well in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and I expect it to continue. We find our strong membership in the west in keeping with the trend of people with conservative values participating in what is considered ‘deviant’ societal behaviour,” he says.

“But Saskatoon? What is going on in Saskatoon?”

Biderman believes that “boom” cities that have a transient population are more likely to be places for affairs.

In the U.S., Las Vegas is a top market for AshleyMadison.com.

“The families may live in other cities. It may feed the opportunity for adulterous affairs.”

Ashley Madison, which was launched in February 2002, has been criticized for encouraging adultery, but it has grown to 13 million members in 17 countries including 1.2 million in Canada, where between 36 and 39 per cent of users are women. A number of social scientists have mined its data to study why people cheat.

jlaucius@ottawacitizen.com