To respond to your question, it's disadvantageous. The more people who are involved in the collection, the better the final output will be. How you politically or legally do that becomes a problem.
I have concerns about the U.S. data. It's not quite as solid as I used to suspect it was.
In Canada, you're right: we're smaller. Therefore, we have less data and it should be easier for us to collect. Let's use that to our advantage and show the world that we can become a leader in collection and dissemination of good solid data.