"When are we going to stand up for ourselves?"

Never unless you want the good times to end.  You are dominated and beholding to the U.S. in every conceivable way and your survival skills consist of selling yourselves with a false narrative, keeping your head low and out of the international media unless it is some staged act of goodwill such as Syrian refugees or shopping for a peace keeping opportunity or putting out the welcome mat for people affected by U.S. border controls, all of which are nothing more than political grandstanding, building the Canadian brand.
Your best option, given that you are so insignificant on the world stage, so dependent on the U.S. and so defenseless is to continue doing what you have been doing.  Eat a little xxx every once in a while, keep your hate of the U.S. at an insidious level and remind yourself that 30 million people could be convinced to replace you in a heartbeat. 
If Canada was a business, it's employees are lazy overpaid whiners.