Is Apple TV a poor product for Canada - We have no access to US Apps

You do realize that all of this is governed by copyright agreements and content provider restrictions, right?

If you don't think it's worth buying, don't buy it.

I live in the UK, we don't get US programming either, I still think it's worth buying.

I live in Canada and while we don't have certain apps restricted to US, there is still a lot to choose from. It also has nothing to do with the CRTC.

For anyone else who's interested there are two Canadian streaming services now available to everyone including via the Apple TV. Shomi and Crave TV. Both are available right now for free one-month trials. AppleTV has Canadian Netflix as well. You can sign up for Shomi and possibly the other ones via iTunes. And then you don't need a credit card. Each month they take the monthly fee from your iTunes account. To do that sign up via the Apple TV rather than your computers browser. Best of luck.

Only Shomi can be done via iTunes, although I wasn't impressed and cancelled after the trial. Having just started Crave Tv it already seems like the better service, however you have to signup via the website and authorize Apple TV by using the code generated on the device

Licensing restrictions set by agreements from the content providers. It isn't just Canada that is impacted, HBO Now for example is only available in the US