I understand that you're trying to create a baseball version of the Soccer World Cup, but having baseball teams playing single games just doesn't work: soccer is played once a week, while baseball is played every day.
I'd have the qualifying rounds at least a double round-robin, probably 4x, with the semifinals a best-of-5 and the championship a best-of-7. Then you'd greatly reduce chances of the Canadians winning at all, let alone twice in a row.
