The difference between Vancouver and SF/London/NYC is that it has no accompanying income boom to make the real estate prices affordable for working people. There's no significant financial or tech industry. Nobody gets rich from working in Vancouver. In fact, Vancouver tech jobs generally pay _less_ than other Canadian cities despite the greatly higher cost of living.
Vancouver firms can offer less pay because there aren't many alternatives when it comes to Canadian cities for a tech worker. Let's see...Toronto, Montreal, Waterloo and Calgary. And the winter weather east of the Rockies is horrible.
I agree, as the only Canadian city west of the Rockies Vancouver employers seem to think they don't need to compete with Toronto/Montreal/Calgary pay. And to a certain extent they're right. But with more and more US firms hiring Canadians on TN visas, the new competition is Seattle/SF.
