"Congratulations, Canada, on making Beaver Balls your national dish."

That's just one of the silly salutes heard tomorrow night on Rick Mercer's Talking To Americans (9 p.m. on CBC).

The hour-long special, a mix of classic road hits from This Hour Has 22 Minutes as well as new material, shows just how clueless Americans are when it comes to their neighbours to the Great White North.

Over the past four years, Mercer has travelled all over the United States, quizzing everyone from college students at Columbia and Princeton, to state governors and politicians as lofty as George W. Bush.

The results are always the same: For most Americans, Canada isn't even on the radar.

"Some of the stupidest are (governing) states," Mercer says.

Bush, for example, didn't even blink last fall on the presidential campaign trail when Mercer brought him greetings from "Prime Minister Poutine."

"Every time, usually at the start of every shoot, I'm saying, 'I can't say this. Somebody's going to get me,' " Mercer says. Yet, time and time again, the Yanks fall for the gag, even when Mercer asks them to salute prime minister Tim Horton, sign a petition to legalize insulin or travel across the Peter Mans Bridge.

"I was very honoured," Peter Mansbridge says.

Mercer insists the responses are never set up or faked.

"It would be a hard sell just showing up out of the blue and asking the Republican Governor of Arkansas to come on the show and make an ass of himself," Mercer points out. "Much easier just to tell him our national igloo is melting."

Mercer says the beauty of the gag is that it would never work the other way around.

"If you went to the University of Toronto and said you were bringing greetings from President Stinky MacPharlane, it wouldn't work. We all know who their president is."

Some fans of The Tonight Show might argue that Americans are just as clueless about their own politics. Jay Leno's "Jay Walking" segments are always drawing blanks from students asked to name somebody as obvious as the current Vice President.

"With Leno, they know him and they know they're having fun with a comedian," he says. "People in the United States don't know who I am; they think I'm a newsman."

More and more people are getting wise to Mercer. After he ambushed Bush last fall, the Gore team was waiting to make sure he didn't pick off their man.

Mercer also failed to goon the Governor of California. "An official asked us straight up, 'Are you the same people who asked George Bush if your prime minister was named after french fries? Get out before we have the state trooper throw you out.' "

ALSO THIS WEEKEND: Anne Rule's And Never Let Her Go stars Mark Harmon (Chicago Hope) and Rachel Ward (The Thorn Birds) in a two part miniseries based on an actual girl-next-door murder which rocked Wilmington, Delaware. Tomorrow night and Monday (9 p.m. on CH and CBS).

Manitoba's coldest December in 122 years plagues the Logies and the Treadways on Pioneer Quest: A Year In The Real West (tomorrow night at 9 p.m. on History Television). The two-hour special documents the hospitalization of hardy settler-in-training Tim Treadway. The series will conclude in June, when both couples will get $100,000 for their brutal, year-long ordeal.

Hopefully, History or somebody will reward both these courageous couples with hot tubs and/or airfare to the exotic warm beach of their choice.