Canada has a housing crisis because no one is stupid enough to arrive to Canada and move to Thunder Bay (sorry TB, but you know its true). As a result all these people go live in one of three or four cities.
The situation is more akin to the rapid urbanization in the third world. Infrastructure cant keep up. Just try GTA traffic. People move to Barrie just to afford a house in the GTA (Barries not GTA!).
Sure Canada is "empty", but its also an inhospitable frozen waste land with 90% of the population living within 100 km of the US border. When we say Canada is "full" what we mean is that Canada cannot build fast enough. That the 3000 km^2 worth living in in Canada are really really dense.
The west lost it's ability to build new cities. Canada could be more like china and use multiple billions to build/encourage growth outside their core city centers. It has the land. Arguably GDP would benefit from having more populous cities between Vancouver and Toronto.
Heck just give Canadians a 0% interest, 0 down mortgage for building a 500k home and residing in it for at least 10 years in say Regina.
"Heck just give Canadians a 0% interest, 0 down mortgage for building a 500k home and residing in it for at least 10 years in say Regina."
No one would take it because you'd be in Regina.
And the West "cant build cities" anymore because there's no need to build a city in the Prairies anymore. 100 years ago physical labor had to man farms, and therefore you had human settlements. There's no need to put a new city in between Winnipeg and Calgary except to store people in it.
The situation is more akin to the rapid urbanization in the third world. Infrastructure cant keep up. Just try GTA traffic. People move to Barrie just to afford a house in the GTA (Barries not GTA!).
Sure Canada is "empty", but its also an inhospitable frozen waste land with 90% of the population living within 100 km of the US border. When we say Canada is "full" what we mean is that Canada cannot build fast enough. That the 3000 km^2 worth living in in Canada are really really dense.