I recently read that during the Great Depression, while small-town American banks were failing left and right (at least partly due to highly restrictive banking laws), there were almost no failures of Canadian banks, largely due to their ability to diversify their portfolios to spread their risk exposure and their ability to open branches across the nation and spread out their liabilities. That was smart, and it proves to Americans that Canadians don't just play hockey or sit around and drink beer and say 'eh' in every other sentence.
If the various political parties in the Canadian government are fighting against each other so hard that they can't pass laws, much less enact a comprehensive program of any kind, that's pretty restrictive. Of course, given the track record of most democratic/republican governments (type, not political persuasion), that's not necessarily a bad thing. Can you maybe export some of that southwards via NAFTA?
