Vancouver has the high COL of the Bay Area with significantly lower wages. I don't see it becoming a major player.

I live in Vancouver, can confirm. Maybe after a significant liquidity event or two pumps some capital into the local ecosystem, but at present there are few (if any) world class tech companies here and despite the incredibly high and fast rising cost of living, wages are actually the lowest of any major Canadian city. Sure its a desirable place to live, but few world class talents are going to relocate here to work for second or third tier companies, for 50% less than they'd make in other markets, when a 30% more of their salary will be going to housing costs. Vancouver is a real-estate city, not a tech city and likely always will be.

I think there are a few like Arista Networks, Facebook and Amazon. You might make 80k+ and spend 15k on housing and the general cost of living is still lower than SF. Just yesterday I meant some SF based founders come visit because of tax credit incentives, lower labour costs, COL, etc.

With the relatively low wages in Vancouver, it seems strange that more companies aren't setting up offices here to take advantage of that.

This is all the more strange if the infographic at the end of this article is correct:

http://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/how-migration-wars-i...

ie. it appears that Vancouver and Toronto have very high quality tech talent but extremely low labour cost. I'm sure much of this is due to the exchange rate. But no matter the reason, it sounds like companies could find a competitive edge by setting up in Canada.

Vancouver is still significantly cheaper than the Bay Area, you can get a studio for less than 1000$USD / month.

This underlines an important distinction about Vancouver real estate: it's very expensive to purchase a home in Vancouver, but rents have not exploded at the same pace. That makes it a very different value proposition from what exists in the SFBA (especially for younger folks who don't necessarily want to buy).

A big gap between buying and renting is the classic indication of a speculative housing bubble. You may not want to buy a place in Vancouver right now.

Also it is in Canada. A huge draw of the Bay Area is its excellent weather. A huge detriment to living in Canada is its horrible weather.

Vancouver has pretty nice, mild weather. Summers in the 70s, winters in the 40s and 50s. Great for outdoors stuff that is nearby. It does drizzle quite a bit, but then so does Seattle, which attracts tech companies & workers just fine.

Canadian companies won't pay the salaries that companies in the US pay. Same for European companies. For that reason alone, I doubt we'll see a whole lot of competition in the tech space outside of the US.

Not to mention that these "highly skilled people" being referred to in the article don't really exist or aren't really affected by the H1B Visa issue. We're talking hordes of JS devs working for Infosys for relatively poor pay and the like. Not PHDs or whatever.

Canada, like anywhere in the West, is certainly an attractive place for people, so long as you land a good gig. Forget Vancouver. Montreal and Toronto are where it's at, but they need to cough up cash or people just aren't going to move there when they can move to Boston or SV or NY.

I was also annoyed at the mention of this new French Statue of Liberty for engineers/scientists initiative. It's just marketing and BS. I want to start a company, think they'll just take me? No. They'll only take the kind of people who are actually going to get a company funded, and those people are just going to move to where the money is: SV.

And furthermore, let's say that some technologists don't immigrate to the US anymore because of policies. GOOD. This helps the entire WORLD, instead of concentrating all the best people on Team America.

--edit--

Also Ottawa <3

Don't forget Ottawa!