The basic story is that we need to heat up the cold war. This will take the focus off of the president for the slouching economy. The Russians are unwilling to play the game, so we must find a new adversary. Canada wins the choice.
Comedy is like smiling. You take a situation that you cannot do anything about, or an attitude that you cannot do anything about, and just laugh at it. This movie is the essence of what many people think they know about Canada. It also contains what many people snicker about politics. So let's take it to the extreme add John Candy, Rhea Perlman a few eh's, a too clean to be true environment; you have "Canadian bacon".

What makes this comedy is not the story but the one-liners and the parody on Canadian life. One of everybody's favorite, is when a truck is stopped because it has obscenities written on the side of it. The authority points out that the obscenity is written only in English and must also be written in French.