I live in Vancouver, and have for many years.. as such, I hope I can try and help inform an otherwise misinformed set of posts. I suspect they're off-base largely because a lot has changed since some of the authors of other posts have lived here.
First, there are many technology companies in Vancouver. Hootsuite, Bench, A Thinking Ape, Clio, Slack, Amazon.. these are just the ones that came to mind. I know authoritatively that each and every single one is looking for senior sales, marketing, engineering and product talent.
Here is a slightly more comprehensive list: http://www.techvibes.com/company-directory/vancouver/tag/sta...
Is the tech ecosystem as big as in SF? No.. but where else is it?
Second, yes.. it is an incredibly expensive place to live. Part of this is due to the large number of homes which are owned by foreigners and are vacant. I'm not aware of a concrete way of measuring this.. but anecdotally, I suspect it's close to 30-40% of the downtown residential core. This is definitely a worrisome issue, but too complex to cover in just a few lines of this post.
Third, be careful not to compare (downtown) Vancouver with it's suburbs. The downtown core is one of the few places in the world where people live and work in the same area... there are a multitude of activities. As many as you'd expect of a city of this size.
Finally, commutes range from 5-30 minutes (and that's going to cover people who walk, bike and take transit).
Vancouver is consistently rated as one of the most livable cities in the world.. but there will definitely need to be changes if we want that to continue to be the case in the long term.