[Tiktaalik]

Yes it's likely more the shortage of housing that is the driving issue in Toronto and Vancouver. With rental vacancy at 1% in Vancouver there's no doubt there's a serious housing shortage and that'll eventually cause the same sort of extreme rents as we've seen in SF. With high rents comes high house purchase prices too.

Meanwhile in Alberta, where their cities sprawl endlessly, as you point out the ultra highly paid oil workers can buy a detached house for cheap. Always easy to build more on the edge. Not at all possible in Vancouver, which is effectively nearly completely built out at this point.

At this point new housing development in Vancouver will be townhouse or denser and the only place to put it is in existing detached home neighbourhoods. Politically contentious so movement will be slow.