Hi Albertan! This is a good point. There is some plausible relief for homebuyers in remote work. A few questions. How is the internet? A lot of places that could host more Canadians have bad internet. That's a top priority in fixing housing.
The other thing to consider is people typically want to stay somewhat close to family and friends. Uprooting and starting a new life across the country is daunting for a lot of people. Sure they could do it, but the result for some will be loneliness, isolation, and perhaps a fallout of other mental health and social issues we can't quite predict. (Also, for homeowners who recommend this as an easy fix... don't you want to see your own children and grandchildren?)
But that's a stick-in-the-mud answer and you're right, more people should move if they want to. I'd prefer a version of Canada where that wasn't their only option, is all.
Check out this great book, "IF you lived here you'd be home by now," on exactly this idea, from a publisher who moved from Washington to Minnesota and started a new life with his family and knew nobody. It's quite a journey and an amazing read.
I heard a few sentences of this over the radio on NPR when I was a a kid and it’s stuck with me ever since. Amazing book and an amazing person https://www.amazon.com/Burn-Journals-Brent-Runyon/dp/1400096421
Very few of the companies in this space are public. Most are still start ups.
I don't know if this book is any good, I haven't read it, but it is supposedly about investing in this area and was just published a few months ago.
https://www.amazon.com/Moos-Law-Investors-Agrarian-Revolution-ebook/dp/B08N1FSMVT
“This Changes Everything” by Christina Robb is one of my favorites. The first half discusses the history of psychotherapy, and the second half discusses analyzing mental health from the perspective of relationships, rather than seeing people as separate individuals. Modern neuroscience backs up this perspective too. This Changes Everything https://www.amazon.com/dp/0312426151/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_PEP14BTBJ9X2M83PEMPN
Hey, I just wrote a paper on this for my uni class and it's actually a bit of both (my emphasis):
>There is a phenomenon in robotics known as the "uncanny valley", first identified by roboticist Masahiro Mori. The uncanny valley describes the slow rise, sharp drop and then relatively fast rise in feelings of familiarity, as robots become more like humans. The uncanny valley illustrates the tendency for human observers to feel uneasy when they encounter a robot which looks and acts like a human, but is not quite accurate. This could be a product of various subtle imperfections: its jerky movements, unnerving facial expressions, a flat and monotonous voice incapable of fully capturing the human range of emotions, and so on. The point is that when we see something which looks a lot like us but is definitely not human, we feel something strange is going on. We know we are being tricked.
From: Robot Rules by Jacob Turner (p. 162f).