Interesting, ok, you can xordon both mention Vancouver to be much more expensive these days, please note that any information about Canada that I have is likely to be 6 years out of date (that's when I last spent time there) and wrt Vancouver closer to 8 years.
I know several people that moved there from Toronto recently and neither of them mentioned expensive housing but I'll take your word for it.
Vancouver was ranked least affordable housing market in the world by the Economist two years back.
I find cost of living in Vancouver (North Shore) quite high when compared, for example, with Portland, OR. Granted, this is one of the more expensive regions in Canada vs a city in a state with no sales tax, but still most of the goods and food in Canada are significantly more expensive than in the US.