In my country, buying a home is the only way to get cheap debt for the vast majority of people.
Detailed analyses exist, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4H9LL7A-nQ .
As Ben notes the tax advantaged status of primary homes has more capacity than most tax sheltered alternatives.
But a lot of this depends upon income.
This reminds me, I need to buy more DFA. :)
I want to buy some small/medium CAP ETFs but there is nothing really in Canada you can buy off the TSX.
Several companies (including major ones like Blackrock, and TD Bank) offer US equity ETFs denominated in CAD available for purchase by Canadians. This includes some basic sector and factor options, and even some leveraged and other derivative ETFs (but expect MER >1% on these).
Your bank can most likely set you up with a "direct investing" or similarly named option (after doing some KYC stuff of course) that allows you to buy ETFs directly in a TFSA or RRSP. Or you can try a third-party service like Questrade, WealthSimple etc. It's even possible to hold options in a TFSA if you have the right paperwork, as long as you don't give the CRA the impression that you're making a "business" out of "day trading". Once you're set up it should be easy to find "some small/medium cap ETFs", for both Canadian and American (and maybe international) holdings.
tl;dr: talk to someone at your bank. Make sure it's clear you aren't looking for investment advice and want to make the decisions yourself. Or look up those third parties. (If you hold registered accounts at multiple institutions, to my understanding you will be held fully responsible for observing a total contribution limit etc. across all of them.)
Also, there's leverage baked into most stocks. Corporations will lever up.