Welcome to R2R! As a fellow Canadian it is worth noting that almost all the contests are in fact things we can participate in. With a few US vendor specific ones (BRS being the biggest) where we can't. Most others we are good to go, I've looked into it in depth as this was an issue I was concerned with at first.
After hanging around it quickly became a non issue as the members here and the wealth of knowledge are FAARRRRRR more of a benefit than the contests.