Almost any comp sci program, on either side of the border, is going to have a lot of dead-weight students who just want to put in the classroom hours and would never dream of programming on the side.

These are the kids who never really learn how to program (there aren't nearly enough classroom hours in a 4 year degree to turn you into a competent coder; building your own side projects is a necessity). These are the kids who give rise to all the complaints about Why Johnny Can't Code, and why academia doesn't prepare people for industry. These are the kids who make up the bulk of the anecdotes about people interviewing 10 candidates for a programming position and finding out that only 1 of them could actually program at even a novice level.

It doesn't really have anything to do with being in Canada.