[run4yourlives2]

As a Vancouverite (well, metro at least) who moved here from Toronto 15 years ago, one of the things that has bothered me most about BC and Vancouver specifically is how reliant the economy is on a few distinct sectors.

In BC, it's resources and literally nothing else. In Vancouver, since resources overall are declining, we run the economy via real estate investment. That's moronic.

As you say, we could become a tech hub easily if we leveraged our easy connection to Seattle and the gateway to Asia that we are. We could become a medical tech hub as well. We could be a centre for finance as well if we invested properly, particularly since oil is now on a downslide.

Our local governments simply have no vision. Our residents are too afraid of change to actually do, well anything really, and all our innovators simply move elsewhere.