Will we ever see a 60 cent can of beer again? ;-)
My understanding is the problem facing us as .22 addicts in Canada is two fold - First, no one in the US is building any new .22rf production plants and the current ones are running at capacty (plus CIL is permanently out of the ammo biz) - frequent down times for equipment repair or material shortages, translate to a dry spell at retailers. When supplys are available US demand are serviced first and we get the leavings. Aguila in Mexico was bought by a major US firm and has doubled their .22 output and quality, but it doesn't seem to put a dent in demand. Then there is the currency exchange which has added most of the increases to .22 costs.
Personally. I blame .22 autoloaders - so many today, when .22s were in their prime it was mostly 5-10 shot repeaters and single shots and no one had the high cap mags they do today. I can say with certainty the amount of .22 brass I see at ranges now is a lot more than when I first started shooting - so to be less verbose: we shoot more .22s and we have the same production supply.