Out of sheer boredom, I was playing around with the Star, Air Canada, and United Electronic Timetables lookig at how developed the relationship between the two are, and I came to the following conclusions:

1)AC benefits much more in this deal than UA, as they seem to place their code a lot more on domestic US codeshare flights(such as ORD-CLT/ATL/SAV/IND/PIT and many others) than UA does on internal AC flights(out of YYZ, UA only codeshares to YQB and YHZ).

2)There seems to be at best hit or miss connectivity from smaller non-AC served US markets to smaller Canadian destinations.

For example, if I wanted to fly GSP-YXS, I would have to purchase 2 sets of tickets(1 set GSP-YVR, 1 YVR-YXS). However SAV-YXS does ticket out as SAV-ORD-YVR-YXS on AC. Some cities work, and some don't, and there seems to be little rhyme or reason as to why SAV has an AC codeshare through ORD while GSP, CAE, SDF, FSD, GEG and MSN don't.
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Maybe I'm just being picky, but I think that either UA or AC would look a lot more attractive to customers if they could buy just one ticket on the same carrier, be it United or Air Canada.

For example, if I'm primarily an AA flyer but have to fly MSN-YQG, I'm more likely to book AA MSN-YYZ and AC for just the YYZ-YQG leg. However if it pops up in the res systems as MSN-ORD-YYZ-YQG on 1 AC ticket, then I'm far more likely to just grin and bear it and fly AC.

Does this make any sense at all?