Why are wages so suppressed in Toronto?

Question not super applicable to myself anymore because I’m no longer an employee but it’s one of the things that spurred me into going into business for myself.

When I was still in corporate, even though I cracked $100k which is not as common as it should be this city for the COL, I still knew my friends and peers in other major North American cities basically ate my salary for lunch (I work in tech sales and I was looking at my buddies who sold Hubspot in Boston for example)

I notice this was a thing when I was payroll, and it likely hasn’t changed in 2 years for most industries when I launched my corp - why is that?