It's everywhere in the country. In 30 years, I have never ever seen so many homeless people in Montréal. Same for Ottawa. But hey, capitalism is the best system so lets do nothing about it, the market will magically fix things.
We are the second largest country in the world yet everyone lives in the same large cities. No shit prices are ridiculous. We really need to incentivize people to spread out.
It's a combination of housing investors and hoarding.
Real Estate companies are just sitting on stock they can't sell at sky high prices. Now they have entered the landlord game and are using stock they can't sell as rental stock, but forcing insane rents. Like 3000 dollars a month for a shit one bedroom out in the suburbs shit.
Entire apartment high rises being sold overseas to foreign investors who don't even have PR status.
The problem can easily be solved, but it requires taking down the rich.
There is more to spreading out than urban sprawl. Our towns and even villages used to largely self-contained. Now you're lucky to find a bank, a bakery, a grocery store, and a hardware store in the same place outside of something big enough to be called a city.
People talk about walkable cities, by which they mean that people can walk to most of their normal goods and services. What is that but a town/village model for communities?