I don't know specifics for Canada but wherever I have been I generally find you get two sorts. This normally follows a period where ISPs are broken up or forced to allow others to compete (a quick search says 2015 this happened here). It is very rare an independent ISP will own any infrastructure* which means they rent from other people. There are some times where you find a given town for whatever reason has a different type of internet (usually someone forgot to buy up a local telecoms company when the monopolies were being formed).
*if they do it will tend to be a 3g, satellite or similar provider which is as good as nothing unless you really are that far out in the sticks. Cables in the ground or on poles tend to be limited to a few different people.
Anyway the two sorts are cheap and cheerful and actually technically capable.
Cheap and cheerful do some maths, figure if they can rent/buy bandwidth at a given price that if they can get so many customers cheap then they can make a profit. They will then tend to cram as many people onto a connection as possible, buy the cheapest tech support they can get away with before their customers revolt en mass... anything to gain a few extra cents really. This usually means their connections will lag during popular times, probably be slower than advertised, problems might not get fixed as quickly and such but they will be cheap which is all some people want. You might see these advertise on TV from time to time.
Technically capable are often quite nice, if a bit expensive. They often do things you actually want like static IPs (and will be recognised as such), will not tend to block ports so you can happily run your own servers, don't tend to mess with peer to peer too much, often don't have crowded connections, will tend to be fairly accurate about the speeds they say you will get, have tech support that know something... You will rarely see these advertise on TV.
They also tend to rent or have limited infrastructure but will play to it.
I quite like these for when someone wants a solid connection but does not want to pay business rates, much less rates where there is a proper service level agreement (SLA) in play.
I see Canada is also one of those backwater places where usage caps are not a memory, and it seems independents claim the ability to do unlimited where the big boys might not so there is also that.
As neither have any infrastructure they can go pop and fold in very short order, sometimes they will be bought out beforehand so you get shuffled onto someone else but other times you will be left arranging for a new ISP.
What each have as far as extra functions -- email, web hosting, storage, newsgroup access... will vary but nobody should be using those anyway. Similarly not many will tend to bundle a TV, internet streaming service or phone deal worth having like some of the big boys might. Exception to this is some of the technically capable people often do a very nice VOIP connection/package, though those will be more useful for businesses which need a lot of phone lines and complicated phone setups but maybe without wanting to buy in the hardware.
