I think that's largely because in the US there's a bit of a civil war between different security services and the politicians they respectively back. Canada doesn't have enough discrete agencies that they can really factionate that way, they can either play nice with the government or inconvenience it if the public good is at stake.

It's of course possible that they're playing nice because the government isn't encroaching on the guarantees in the charter of rights, and I hope that's the case, but it's not evidence of anything that they're playing nice.