We have debated this issue a lot on here. You'd be hard pressed to find a Canadian who uses the internet who doesn't know what a .ca domain is. Most major brands operating in Canada use a .ca - Google, Yahoo, MSN, Hersheys, Amazon, iCoke.ca, and on and on. You see them in ads all the time. Germany's .de is the extreme example of country code adoption gone right, with an active market for them. Don't forget UK and Germany have much bigger populations than Canada. We are close to the US and suffer a bit from the '.com was first' scenario, so the .ca market isn't super active right now. The potential is there for the future though, and we do see some big sales, like the recent Slots.ca for 200k.
If you find good two word .ca's right now available to hand reg, chances are if you park them you won't make reg fee back - ofcourse there are exceptions. But if you build a webpage or website for the domain with relevant content, you'll have a good chance to get Canadian search engine traffic and can monetize through ad sense and affiliate programs.
My latest .ca inquiry was from a realtor for a 'cityrealestate' .ca domain. He would only go to $250 for the domain, even though in my opinion one lead that converted to a sale would more than cover the cost, it's easy to remember, looks great in an ad, and would get good search engine ranking. The same name in .com is being used by another realtor in the area. So for now I'll continue to earn from the traffic to the page, and continue to be his competitor, or sell to his competitor.
I will likely drop a few of my .ca this year to pare down my portfolio, ones that don't get traffic, are harder to monetize, or that at the time I thought would be easy to sell, but most I will keep because the internet just keeps getting more popular and all those future websites will need good domains.
