Canada’s rental crisis is often dismissed by the corporate media as a “mismatch” between supply and demand. But a deeper analysis of the country’s rental market — where tenants face some of the highest housing costs on the planet — reveals that a tiny percentage of landlords are controlling the sector and exploiting tenants for their own gain.

None of Canada’s five million tenants need to read Canada’s mainstream media to know that the county is facing a rental crisis. Over the past year, according to an RBC Economics study, the country saw its “highest annual increase in rent growth on record.” These skyrocketing rents have also caused homelessness to explode in nearly all of Canada’s major cities. Housing congestion is a growing issue as well, with nearly 20 percent of renters in Toronto, 21 percent in Mississauga, 11 percent in Montreal, 13 percent in Edmonton, and 11 percent in Vancouver are forced into overcrowded housing units “not suitable for their household size.”

However, a significant portion of media coverage simplistically attributes the housing crisis to a mere incongruity between the demand for rental housing and its supply, removing from the equation the landlords who are charging excessive rents. On this view, housing crises are not examples of profiteers leveraging market failure, but rather a fleeting problem that people should accept and move beyond.