This is a big help, thank you for the information. I am Canadian and would therefore be interested in a Canadian credit card, or several. I'm glad to hear the impact to the credit score isnt substantial. I've recently bought a house and I already have an MBNA Smart Cash card which I use for daily spending and I have an AMEX corporate card that I use for business travel. I do travel for business but its fairly infrequent so I wouldnt count on that for much in the way of points.

So far i'm leaning towards the AMEX Platinum or Gold cards as I believe they give good signup bonus's, and someone posted a deal about the Marriott card for Canadian's giving 50,000 signup points.