As a guy who grew up in Victoria, went to UVic, lived in Seattle and then moved to the bay area, Seattle can pretty much beat Vancouver & Victoria on all of those metrics. On top of it you can recruit all of those BC engineers with TN visas, and home is just a few hours drive (or boat) away.

Why live & work in Vancouver when you can live & work in Seattle for half the price and twice the income? Literally.