Like it or not a lot of people's knowledge about the system they exist in comes essentially via osmosis from the media they consume. And most of the media we consume is American. We laugh at Canadians who defend themselves referencing American laws but I suspect a poll of people who mistakenly believe that some American legal concept applies to them would be disturbingly high.
This is why CanCon laws and more recently the Online News Act are so important. We have the average person in school for 12-16 years and then a lifetime where you'd hope people would be somewhat self-driven in keeping informed about this stuff, but we've got the humanity we've got and not the one we'd wish we'd got so we'd better ensure the media Canadians are consuming informs us about our own system.