Canada's a pretty free place, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't have the well-thought-out constitution that America has, which means every once in a while you get things like the October Crisis - where habeas corpus was suspended, thousands of warrantless searches were conducted, and almost five hundred people were arrested in nighttime raids and held without charges, in some cases for weeks.

Americans really don't appreciate what they've got. Historically, civil liberties are the exception, not the rule, and there's certainly no guarantee they'll stick around in the future.