Proudly Canadian 
Website speed is measurable, and for Canadian businesses it has concrete consequences: Google uses Core Web Vitals as a ranking signal, mobile users abandon sites that load slowly, and e-commerce conversion rates drop measurably for each additional second of load time. This checklist covers the full stack from the server up, organized by where time is being spent and how much impact each change has.
Establish a baseline first
Run your URL through WebPageTest.org with the Toronto test location selected and record the TTFB, Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), and Total Blocking Time (TBT). Run it three times and use the median result. You now have a number to improve against. PageSpeed Insights runs from a US data centre, so its TTFB reading reflects US-to-Canada latency rather than what your actual Canadian visitors experience.
Server and caching layer
If TTFB is above 600ms, start here. Verify full-page caching is working: use curl -I https://yourdomain.ca and check for an X-Cache: HIT or X-LiteSpeed-Cache: hit header. A MISS on every request means caching is not functioning. Verify PHP-FPM has sufficient workers and that your server has enough RAM that PHP processes are not swapping. These two items account for the majority of high TTFB cases on Canadian WordPress VPS installations.
Image optimization
Check whether images are served in WebP format, sized appropriately for their display dimensions, and have responsive srcset attributes. A 1200px banner appearing at 400px wide on mobile sends three times more data than necessary. Install a WebP conversion plugin and verify it is configured to serve WebP to supporting browsers. Enable lazy loading for images below the fold. Preload hero images with a link rel=preload tag to prevent them being discovered late in the page parse.
Third-party scripts
Audit the third-party scripts on your site using WebPageTest's script blocking feature. For each script, ask whether it is actually being used and whether its impact on load time is justified. A chat widget serving ten conversations per month but adding 800ms to every page load is not a good trade-off. Load tracking scripts with async and place them at the bottom of the document to minimize impact on LCP.
Core Web Vitals specifics
Largest Contentful Paint: preload the LCP resource, ensure it is not render-blocked, and serve it as efficiently as possible. Interaction to Next Paint: minimize JavaScript execution time by deferring non-critical JavaScript. Cumulative Layout Shift: add explicit width and height attributes to all images so the browser can reserve space before the image loads, eliminating the layout shift that occurs when images pop in.
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