AC pricing is often ridiculous, that's why I stopped being so blindly loyal to them. Status perks are nice, but when I can get essentially the same flight and COS with someone else for literally half the money, it's a no-brainer.

If you don't mind burning some points for a positioning flight to YVR (or taking the ferry), I expect you can probably get a much better deal with AA or DL flying YVR-CLT.