[someone123]

Ontario's pretty different since so many cities are so close together. Halifax is the only game in town, so to speak, so nearby suburbs are unambiguous. When it comes to a metro like Kitchener-Waterloo, however, it's a bit more complicated. It's only about a 30 minute drive from Kitchener to Guelph, and Guelph is considered a separate CMA. Hamilton is basically a part of the built up Toronto region but it is an older city and it maintains an identity from a period when the two cities were effectively farther apart. Still, I don't think it feels as large or important as Quebec City even though its CMA population is similar.

St. Catharine's-Niagara is not really one city that's grown into a metropolitan area, it's another agglomeration of small towns. The scale of downtown St. Catharine's reminds me more of Moncton than Halifax. Same thing goes for Kitchener, although they have been getting a lot of development lately so maybe that has changed.

London is pretty much a standard metro and is an hour or more from other major cities, although I think the little farm towns might inflate the numbers a bit. It's not hard to imagine turning the land within a 100 km radius of Halifax into Annapolis Valley-style farmland and bumping up the rural population considerably.