the easiest or clearest spanish variation for you will be the one you get acquainted with from the beginning. if you become familiarized with the standard, then standard will be, and as much as the speaker deviates from this standard the more difficult for you. As you live in canada i suppose you mean spanish from america. then think about what country or what people you are going to be in contact most of the time. and with the time, you may understand more and more different styles. just like me in english. i still have problems to understand some kinds of english, but not as many as i had in the beginning.

For me, Mexican accent because it seems a little bit slower than for instance accents in Spain. The "melody" in Mexican Spanish also is a bit more similar to my native tongue (Swedish) so I guess my brain recognises it and "homes" in better to it than it does to other accents. Watch some Mexican soap operas and tell me what you think ;)

hi zorba, I guess you need to learn the accent when you are envolving, but taking time and working hard you can be able to understand spanish no matter the accent, so let's study and practise, (like english sometimes I need to speak english with people whouse diferent accents, british, italian, japanese, french, etc)

It is just an opinion, but I think the easiest accent to understand is the Colombian accent or some neutral accents used to transalte movies (mostly performed by colmobians or neutral mexicans). The reason is that in Colombia the words are perfectly spelled mosy of the time, while in some other countries the pronunciation of some letters varies from the original spanish, and there are parts of the continent where the S is rarely pronunciated. But as Josep says, the accent you learn is the one you will be most familiarized. But eventually you will be able to not only identify but to undestand different accents.

Después de cierto tiempo de estar aprendiendo español, considero que el acento que se presenta en la capital colombiana es agradable y podría ayudarte a tu primera inmersión en la lengua nativa.