Canadian housing has lately started to increase with 198,282 housing starts last month, after a slowdown in the housing market in 2012, when the government mortgage lending rules became tighter, in order to prevent home buyers from taking on high debts. The many who feared (mainly economists at Canada’s big banks who are the major mortgage lenders) that there could be a bubble in the housing market are starting to suspect the creation of another one, now that housing prices are starting to accelerate quickly together with house starts increasing greatly.
Mathieu Laberge, deputy chief economist at CMHC says that in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, together with British Columbia is where the biggest activity increase has been recorded, while the total projected units should be between 179,300 and 190,600.

In my opinion banks are the main drivers of housing prices to go up, given that loans in most of the cases is what allows people to buy houses by a mortgage. For Canada its a great business to buy a house and rent it, given the big number of immigrants that come to take advantage of Canada’s resources which bring various job opportunities. This makes hard for the government to tighten lending policies.

Source:

http://www.bnn.ca/News/2013/11/8/Housing-starts-climb-in-October.aspx