could you be more specific about what tech field you are talking about?

I too am a tech worker in Canada, but most of the jobs in my field (Kernel programmer) are starting at about 75K or so (or at least they were in 2018 when I was new), and compared to most of my peers I'm taking the passion route that pays a bit less. My wife went the dev ops route and found a similar starting salary and had I sold my soul to app dev (and the type of shop that hires only university grads) I would be looking at around 90K or so starting salary. 5 years on we are both making 115KCAD or so.

If I look at my alma maters' coop statistics, I can see that even first year coop positions are going for an average of 20CAD/hr (so equivalent to ~40K a year) (and those numbers tend be skewed down since they include general math degrees, which have less market value).

So Either a lot has changed in the last 5 years (Job market seems to have cooled off a fair amount, but judging by my linkedin tech jobs are still very much in demand), you are talking about a tech job that doesn't require a university degree, or their are extenuating circumstances that are making you less desirable. If it is the third there are generally quite a lot you can do to mitigate that, biggest among them being to build your portfolio (protip, small finished and/or published projects are much more impressive than large half done ones).