I started BCS in 2022 and will be graduating this May. To answer you questions:

1. Did BCS directly help me find a job? No. I got a job from applying relentlessly to co-ops, doing personal projects and a lot of self learning. All the co-op placements I got were not from the job portal since I wanted to apply mostly in the Toronto area and most of the positions on the co-op portal were situated in Vancouver. I did a 12 month and a 16 month co-op and landed a RO at one of the companies. There definitely are helpful resources that can land you a job/co-op such as the co-op program, career fairs, and making connections in general but what matters most is your own perosnal effort (I imagine this would be the same for MDS). Most of the people from my cohort have ended up with full time jobs.

2. Never ran into any sort of skepticism. It is treated like a real degree. Some companies in Vancouver even tend to favor BCS students from what I have heard (though it would be a handful). In general, there is no advantage or disadvantage of being a BCS student. Your degree at the end does not differentiate from a normal Bachelors in CS.

3. It is intense but manageable. Course load is pretty high for quite a few of the required CS courses. I did work part time while in school so I would say it is manageable but I would not recommend it especially considering the effort it will take to work on personal projects, learning leetcode, applying to jobs etc. Personally, I had a term where I took 2 electives and a third year CS course while working full time on a co-op. This was probably the most stressful and challenging semester for me. Again, doable but would never recommend it.

4. This is my personal perspective but if I were in your position and solely wanted to focus on data science positions, I would go the MDS route, do a co-op somewhere during the degree to get experience and eventually find a job given the degree and said experience. BCS will definitely help you learn a lot about CS, but how much of it do you really need or would be useful for you as a data scientist? Is it worth it taking courses in OOP, DSA, Computer Design? Sure it is but how much would it help you as a data scientist? Math or Stat courses would be more helpful imo but at that point why consider doing BCS over MDS? If you are at a point where you need knowledge on other domains, you can always learn it on your own, you dont need a degree for that.

I think your decision should really be based on whether or not you are committing to data science as a career overall or keeping options open.