Vancouver may have "no industry" relative to SV, but it is a veritable black hole for tech on the west coast of Canada. The same rat race of high-skilled, well-paying jobs only being available in HCoL cities is just as much of an issue north of the border. The even smaller gap between compensation and CoL in Vancouver, Toronto, etc. just serves to make things more miserable.

Huh. I was always told that Vancouver was a staging ground for Amazon & Microsoft folks who didn't want to or couldn't immigrate to the US.