When the US does something, even something that makes a lot of sense, Canada will usually wait, and then do it. Here's why. Or rather here's how it was explained to me.

Explained to me by a friend who was very high up in AT&T/Bell Telephone in the States. He was at a meeting once with a bunch of other AT&T guys in Ottawa, with Bell Canada and a Canadian government representative. The AT&T guys laid out what they wanted to do and it sounded perfect and exactly what Canada wanted to do.

But they wern't going to do it.

The AT&T guys were flabbergasted. But it was explained by the representative from the Canadian government: "We don't have the money the US does, they can afford to make mistakes. We can't, so we watch what they do, and if it works out, we'll do that. But we can't afford to do it twice."