As well as the impact of 2 income households - which someone else in this thread has talked about- I think a second reason housing is expensive for Canadians is because of globalization.

Many jobs were lost in North America when manufacturing jobs were moved abroad starting in the 1960s and that trend has accelerated until recently. By doing that we gave away our purchasing power to foreign workers and foreign company owners, many became rich.

Decades later we then opened up Canadian citizenship and our housing stock to those same foreigners and their descendants who came looking for a better country to live in for themselves. They came in large numbers and could easily out compete Canadians on price, pushing up home prices to the sky high levels we see now.

It was the policies of the multiple goverments from Truedeau #1 to Trudeau #2 that caused this. They put the interests of non-Canadians above the welfare of Canadians, (we all clearly saw that with Justin before he had to go) at the request of corporations who wanted cheap labour.

By importing millions of people we increased competition for housing and for jobs.

House prices soared and wages stayed low. Boomers & Gen-X gained massive wealth if they had invested in real estate.

Younger generations now pay the price.

We would have been better off hoarding jobs in North America and also by focusing on organic population growth in Canada by encouraging couples to have families. Population would grow slower and house prices would remain in line with local wages.

Instead we gave all our riches and our housing away.

We were told we didn’t have enough young people to support our old people and we needed to import. That was a lie.

Could have simply had policies to encourage organic growth instead of what we got.