Here's the interesting thing I find about all this (and one that seems not to have been mentioned):

In Canada, we are more similar to America than anyone else (for the most part). Now, before you fellow hosers scream "Sacrilege", hear me out.

Beyond all of the licensing issues and stupid protectionism rules and laws we have here in Canada, services wishing to be in this country are doing so in probably the most similar country to the US than anywhere in the world. The dollar is almost at par, our language is the same (for most of us), culturally we're incredibly similar, we like the same kinds of entertainment and laugh at most of the same kinds of jokes. We share the worlds longest unprotected border, with billions and billions of goods travelling across in an entirely over-tariffed manner. We have very few barriers to entry into each other's country, causing a hell of a lot of cross-border whatever-you-wanted-to-do. Heck, we even have border cities named the same (Niagara Falls anyone?).

If fact, as a Canadian, if I were to simply just land in any US city and tell everyone I'm a US citizen they'd probably have no reason to disagree with me (at least until I ended a sentence in "Eh" or talked goofy).

In Canada, we're called a branch-plant economy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branch_plant_economy) and I'd hazard to say that many American operating companies could simply provide service with very little technical barriers.

I'm just amazed at how we're so accessible to each other in many ways and yet so many services are off limits and stuff like iPads are released here a month later. Perhaps it keeps us from being flooded by Americanism, who knows.