I wanted to note that all of these small towns are geographically very close aside from Thunder Bay. This could make for an interesting communications study. ie) How does civic paranoia flow throughout social groups in small town Ontario? It appears that it's moving South towards Toronto. We need to take containment measures immediately. Cut off all communication. Nevermind, they're already moving in that direction. We're safe.

Why not just measure productivity for both scenarios? I'm not here to design this experiment, because we all know how it could work. Regardless, why not empirically prove that either scenario fosters more productivity? It only makes sense. Hell, I'm sure there have been academic studies on this topic. Pull those up. In the end, it doesn't matter what you SAY about productivity. All that matters is MEASURED productivity, of course with some wiggle room for worker morale.