This is why I am hugely in support of increased immigration into Canada, housing crisis aside (it'll resolve over time)
Canada and the US are lacking in good public transit because as a society we've made the choice to build for cars and not build for people. Almost everything about our built environment is optimized for cars and the result is sprawl. The cause is our public policies, building regulations, and zoning.
It has nothing to do with the size of the country, because people don't try to commute across the country, just like people who live in Paris generally don't commute to Berlin every day. The vast majority of travel is local and occasionally regional.
Notjustbikes posted a good video rebutting this argument a few days ago: https://youtu.be/REni8Oi1QJQ
You should compare the populated area, not the entire landmass. That there exist vast unpopulated frozen tundras nominally within Canadian borders does not hinder public transport any more than Siberia hindered building the Moscow metro.
I forget where I read this phrase first, but: every flight in this corridor is a policy failure.
Funny thing is that Canada used to have that public transit infrastructure, from big cities even into tiny little towns. The country was built on it!
We eventually ripped it up because it turns out people liked driving cars more. And I posit that they still do. If the will was there, it could be rebuilt, but it turns out moaning is a lot easier.
And fuck all the suffering along the way? Honestly Canada needs to address that before it can even begin to start thinking about more immigration. Canada is not even vaguely equipped to handle more people as it stands now.
I suspect the US has a few states that are willing to help.