So if you're anywhere near Toronto you're not going to get a low cost of living. The suburbs are cheaper than the city itself but something strange has happened in the pandemic: people working from home have decided that they don't need to live in Toronto any more. What that means is that house prices are skyrocketing in the cities outside of Toronto. (I don't know if rent is increasing in the same way. Rent in Toronto itself has decreased slightly due to people not having any money but I don't know what is happening outside of the city proper.) So, unfortunately, it is a really bad time to buy in the immediate suburbs of Toronto. Here's a map:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Toronto_Area
As I said about schools, I don't know how much difference there truly is. Other parents are going to tell you that some schools are much better than others. And at least one Canadian think tank has a rating system for elementary schools which people think is legitimate
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/school-performance /
https://www.compareschoolrankings.org/
However, let me just say that, as a former student of the Ontario school system, this is all bullshit. (Or, at least, it was bullshit twenty years ago.) I had a massively different education in junior high (aka senior school, 7-8) because I attended what is known as an "alternative school". But, otherwise, my education at my elementary school was not distinctly better or worse than my friends', who went to other elementary schools. Moreover, I went to a "good" public high school, supposedly one of the best public high schools in Toronto. There was grade-rigging and there was very little adequate preparation for university on the social sciences/humanities side. (Math and science education were quite good, as was the standard in these types of "collegiate" schools across the province.)
Given that funding is pretty consistent across regions and much of how your kid does is up to individual teachers, I'm not sure you can rely on the claims made about one school being better than another. But I could be wrong.