Legendary investor Warren Buffett often likes to riff on what it means to be a long-term investor.

“I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years,” he’s been known to say.

Similarly, as long-term investors, ourselves, we spend a lot of time looking for dividend stocks that we’d be happy to buy and hold forever. Fortunately, we hold a number of such stocks in our Income Portfolio.

But there are 27 names in this portfolio, and not everyone has the time or energy to sift through the holdings to find the stocks that they’d be happy to hold through thick and thin—or, at the very least, for the next five years.

So we sliced and diced the data on these 27 stocks to identify a subset of core holdings that offer the right balance of income, value, and long-term earnings and dividend growth.

Additionally, we also considered the bigger picture. Over the past year, it feels like we’ve finally reached a stage where the Internet and all of the technologies that piggyback on networked computing are radically changing just about every industry and business model.

This outcome may seem obvious, but it actually took a long time to unfold.

Recall the tech-sector triumphalism of the mid-to-late 1990s, when Internet also-rans like Kozmo.com promised city dwellers that it could deliver anything they wanted within one hour. I was in college at the time, and one of my buffoonish roommates had them deliver a pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. Naturally, it had already melted.

The ensuing dot-com bust deferred the Internet revolution by another 10 to 15 years. And it really took the Internet plus wireless to take things to the next level. Now, the Uberization of just about any industry seems possible, if would-be keyboard entrepreneurs see value in doing it.

While I can’t help but marvel at how much things have changed in recent years, when you’re a long-term value investor this situation can make stock selection downright frustrating.

For instance, I was recently checking up on a reliable U.S. mid-cap growth stock that I’d previously written about for one of our other services. A big part of its business involves recycling parts and metal from totaled cars—just the sort of boring business that in the past you could count on to grind out dependable long-term earnings growth.

But now this company could face a secular decline due to the advent of driverless cars—that is, assuming our new artificially intelligent overlords can avoid collisions.

We also looked at the business cycles of the various industries in which our companies operate and eliminated some of the more highly cyclical names.

At the same time, we also observed that we’re still not all that far from the bottom of the energy cycle, so at this stage it makes sense to invest in companies leveraged to its continuing rebound, even though energy markets have yet to find equilibrium.

We believe the five stocks in the table below are suitable as core holdings for income investors interested in Canadian stocks. Relative to the rest of our holdings, they should give investors the least amount of heartache over the next five years, while offering attractive yields with the prospect for further dividend growth.

BCE Inc. (TSX: BCE, NYSE: BCE) sports the highest forward yield among these five names, at an enticing 4.7%. Conversely, it has the lowest earnings and dividend growth trajectory.

So why did it make the cut? The telecom giant is part of Canada’s Big Three along with Telus Corp. (TSX: T, NYSE: TU) and Rogers Communications Inc. (TSX: RCI/B, NYSE: RCI). We like to refer to the trio as our favorite oligopoly because they boast commanding shares of the country’s wireless market.

While the Canadian government has tried to introduce competition to this space, thus far the Big Three have used the power of incumbency to maintain their dominance.

Although Telus is expected to generate stronger earnings growth, it also shoulders significantly more debt than BCE. Meanwhile, Rogers is in the midst of executing an operational turnaround, while also carrying substantial leverage.

In addition to superior fundamentals, BCE offers investors the strongest convergence play of the three, courtesy of its operations across all the means of distributing media via cable, Internet, wireless, and fiber-optics. In a rapidly evolving communications landscape, we want a company that can pull as many levers as possible to maintain or expand its market share. BCE is a buy below C$72, or US$53.

Brookfield Infrastructure Partners LP (TSX: BIP-U, NYSE: BIP) is one of the publicly traded portfolios of Canadian alternative asset giant Brookfield Asset Management (TSX: BAM/A, NYSE: BAM).

Brookfield is an incredibly shrewd investor. Instead of chasing assets higher like many of its institutional peers, the asset manager is content to bide its time until the sectors it follows experience maximum pain.

At that point, it swoops in and scoops up the best assets for pennies on the dollar. And given its global footprint, Brookfield is poised to take advantage of market dislocations just about anywhere.

Brookfield Infrastructure’s globally diversified portfolio consists of high-quality regulated and contracted assets across the utilities, transportation, energy, and communications sectors. The stable cash flows generated by these assets support the partnership’s targeted long-term distribution growth trajectory of 5% to 9% annually. Brookfield is a buy below C$54, or US$40.

Fortis Inc. (TSX: FTS, NYSE: FTS) may be the largest investor-owned utility in Canada, but it generates a majority of its operating income—about 54.4% during the first quarter—from its regulated utility operations in the U.S.

In 2014, Fortis acquired the Arizona-based electric utility UNS Energy Corp. in a US$4.3 billion transaction. On the strength of its experience with UNS, Fortis acquired ITC Holdings Corp. last year in a potentially transformative US$11.1 billion cash-and-stock deal.

ITC was the only publicly traded pure-play transmission company in the U.S., and its FERC-regulated assets are authorized to earn higher returns on equity than all other forms of utility infrastructure.

Additionally, we believe the wires will prove to be among the most valuable assets of 21^st century utility infrastructure. With the rise of distributed generation, all those renewable resources will need connections to the grid, which should spur a transmission buildout. Fortis is a buy below C$45, or US$34.

We’ll admit to being a bit nervous about the energy sector’s recovery. After all, shale producers are pulling hydrocarbons out of the ground like crazy, while OPEC is about to revisit its agreement to cut production.

Fortunately, Suncor Energy Inc. (TSX: SU, NYSE: SU) is prepared for just about any eventuality.

The Canadian oil giant famously went into the energy crash with more than C$5 billion on its balance sheet, which enabled it to maintain its dividend while picking up top assets on the cheap from troubled competitors.

And Suncor’s conservatism extends beyond the fiscal arena. The disciplined operator continually searches for ways to cut costs and run its business more efficiently.

Indeed, Suncor is one of the lowest-cost operators in the oil sands. During a recent earnings call, CEO Steven Williams noted that the company can sustain both its dividend and its existing infrastructure even if oil were to trade at $40 per barrel for a protracted period. That means anything above that threshold is gravy. Suncor is a buy below C$44, or US$33.

Most Americans know of TransCanada Corp. (TSX: TRP, NYSE: TRP) because of the Keystone XL debacle. Despite the fixation on the project in the U.S., the Canadian pipeline giant always had a lot more going on than that US$8 billion pipeline.

Indeed, TransCanada owns one of North America’s largest natural gas pipeline networks, which extends nearly 57,000 miles. And its crude-oil pipelines transport one-fifth of Canada’s oil exports to the U.S.

Beyond that, TransCanada has about C$22.5 billion in near-term growth projects that will commence operations over the next few years.

Management says these projects support dividend growth toward the upper end of its target range of 8% to 10% annually through 2020. TransCanada is a buy below C$63, or US$47.