I recently saw a YT realtor talk about one of the downsides of St.Albert being constantly increasing commute times.
It's a slow creep, but eventually sprawl becomes a mind numbing, and painful thing to all those that participate in it.
These same things happened in Vancouver, and now the geniuses are the ones that bought in the West End neighbourhood instead of getting a slightly bigger house in Burnaby or Richmond.
I don't see how there is any upside to living far out of the core if you're buying a 1:1 house.