Canada always had a small military
No, it hasn't. During WWII it had the third-largest navy in the world. Now, however, the Royal Canadian Navy has a mere 15 surface combatants, 4 submarines, one support ship, 12 coastal mine countermeasures ships and 11 unarmed patrol/training vessels to defend the country with the world's longest coastline.
Nowadays, Canada's military is so tiny than its contribution to NATO is merely political rather than military. Militarily, Canada is impotent.
Britain, on the other hand, has the fourth largest military in NATO in terms of numbers of active military personnel after the US, Turkey and France, and when taking the reserve personnel into consideration on top of that it ranks fifth behind the US, Turkey, Poland and Greece.
pulled off things you Brits couldn't do.
Like what?