[Tiktaalik]

Most of the land is useless and completely unviable for building anything. Seriously.

Almost all of British Columbia is mountain. We flooded many of the river valleys for hydro power in the 1950s. Can't build on the side of the mountain that easy.

Huge swathes of Canada are muskeg bog and tundra. etc.

[joshlemer]

IMO British Columbia is way under-developed. There is literally 15 or so Switzerlands worth of some of the most beautiful and desirable real estate North of Vancouver that could be developed in similar way to the cities in the Swiss Alps. The Okanogan is not really all that mountainous but is basically unpopulated, etc.

[Tiktaalik]

Funny thing about the Okanagan is that given that it's pretty much the only land in Canada where you can make decent red wine, a lot of that land is more worthwhile for agriculture than housing.

Feel bad for the farmers that happened to be born on the wrong side of the border in the US side of the valley. In the USA there's heaps of places where wine can be made and their land isn't worth anywhere nearly as much.