Protip: many landlords in hot property markets like Vancouver are speculators who are using your rent to pay their mortgage. Offer to pay a year's worth of rent up front in return for a discount (I'd ask for 3% - more than you can get from a risk-free investment but less than the landlord's mortgage interest rate).
Obviously this only applies if you have sufficient liquidity that paying $30,000+ upfront isn't going to impact your life in other ways.
Alas, the BC Residential Tenancy Act makes it illegal to have a deposit larger than one month's rent. Not that anyone is going to stop you -- but if you pay 12 months of rent in advance, you can legally demand the next day to have 11 of those months of rent returned to you. Unfortunately the law is very clear that you can't sign away your right to only pay one month of deposit -- even if you want to.
Obviously this only applies if you have sufficient liquidity that paying $30,000+ upfront isn't going to impact your life in other ways.