In the last couple decades, it's become affordable to mine tarsands. The oil boom has meant people in those places make a lot more money. Naturally, they are making more money than their parents did.
The other green area is Toronto. If you're 40-50 in Toronto today, you probably bought a house in your late 20s or early 30s, which has now quadrupled on value.
All of that to say, many of the places where mobility is rising may be short lived. In reality, we may be an entire country of low mobility, except for the few lucky areas.
This makes no sense. Every large city is dark green (the best.) Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec City. Even Montreal is light green. Most smaller cities—like Halifax, Winnipeg, Saskatoon—are also dark green.
A city is defined as 100,000 population or greater in Canada, none of the cities you mentioned are small given that context. A good example of a small Canadian city is Thunder Bay. I'd give you more... but I'm from the GTA. ;)
You're right, there probably are other factors in play here. But there is almost certainly not one reason to explain everything. Oil looks quite likely to be a major reason, but we should find out what the other reasons are.
If by a lot you mean 1 province (alberta) out of the top 10 urban centres in Canada ... oh hell i'll just say it, no alberta is not the engine of the Canadian economy, the golden horseshoe is. Oil prices are at rock bottom and Canada is still doing fine.
In the last couple decades, it's become affordable to mine tarsands. The oil boom has meant people in those places make a lot more money. Naturally, they are making more money than their parents did.
The other green area is Toronto. If you're 40-50 in Toronto today, you probably bought a house in your late 20s or early 30s, which has now quadrupled on value.
All of that to say, many of the places where mobility is rising may be short lived. In reality, we may be an entire country of low mobility, except for the few lucky areas.