This is one tough question and if you Google search for information on this, you will discover many answers, making the issue more confusing. We simply can’t get a concrete answer to this question. 

Let us rephrase the question to highlight the important points. How does hosting in one country while trying to rank in another country affect rankings in the search engines? For example, let us assume that your server is located in Canada and you want to rank in the US. Does the fact that the location of your hosting provider is a different country affect your rankings?