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"Mainly because Canadians generally don't 'belong' to a political party or movement. Almost everyone here will vote almost any direction, depending on the issues at hand and happiness with the status quo. "

That's the number one thing that's bugging me in the US and I think is hurting the US a lot. The parties have managed to become so entrenched that people think they have to follow their chosen party instead of thinking about issues themselves.

Not entirely true. Canada has "conservatives" and "everybody else". We get a lot of american media here which unfortunately poisons a lot of our political debates.

  Canada has "conservatives" and "everybody else".

Not at all. Just because there is only 1 party with the word "conservative" in their name does not reduce it to a binary system with no tangible differences within the different parties. I do agree with the USA's political poisoning - it's a shame when we see "political trends" move home.

Canada has big areas that are pretty consistent in how they vote, and identity politics do play a role. This is not as consistent as it is in areas of the U.S., but there are definitely a large number of ridings where upsets are rare.

That being said, the biggest difference between Canadian politics and U.S. politics (at the Federal level at least) is campaign contribution limits. For non-Canadians, individual donations to political parties is capped ($1,550) and election campaign spending is also capped. In Canada you can't simply out-fund-raise and out-spend your opponents. This limits the influence of corporations and the ultra-rich, at least a little. Campaign spending is still climbing rapidly and I'd personally like to see campaign spending limits ratcheted downwards.

The Canadian system is not perfect. Shadowy PAC's, ostensibly funded by third parties or even foreign interests, do exert undesirable influence. Lobbyists ply their trade in Ottawa the same as anywhere else. However, the Canadian system seems to result in governments that represent the will of the people to a larger degree than we've seen in the U.S. lately. B.C. on the other hand...

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As for big government vs low taxes... Ultimately, stuff has to get built somehow. In the U.S., private interests often wind up owning infrastructure that would be public in Canada. The results of this are frequently perverse. Let's go back to that bridge for a moment... Canada offered to pay for the bridge, and here's an ad that came out against letting Canada build that bridge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v93ii7eKjjo

Why is this ad trying to make voters suspicious of a "free bridge"? Look no further than the person who funded that ad: Manuel Moroun. Why does he care about free bridges? He owns the ambassador bridge, a toll bridge that the "free bridge" would have competed with. Having a bottleneck to traffic is bad for the local economy, but great for Moroun. If the bridge hadn't been "free" and the opposition a little more subtle, it very well might not have been built. This is likely a big contributing factor to the infrastructure building paralysis in areas of U.S. that aren't adjacent to Canada's border.

I'm in BC and we definitely have identity politics and polarized parties. It's not as bad as the US today, but it's there. Comparable to the US in the 90s maybe. Also BC leans heavily left which I'm not such a fan of. Maybe it seems less ideological to leftist but that's just because it's their ideology.*

* Not saying this about OP, just that I've observed that bias generally.

BC has had a conservative government for over a decade and the most recent election split things almost 50/50.

> our house prices are insane, and the cost of living is very high

are you from Toronto or Vancouver? In Montreal (and Quebec in general), this is not true.