fly4apuckguy, I'd try every business on here: http://www.upperdeck.com/Business-To-Business/UDA-Internet-Retailer-Locator.aspx that's in Canada.
I've had personal and very positive experience on the breaks and box purchase side with Breakaway (Chuck is great to deal with), Out of the Box (Jimmy and Dan are also great to deal with) and CloutsNChara (Dan and Geoff are great too and I've done the most with these guys).
I don't know well any of the other AIRs and haven't bought any sealed product in size from Canada which brings me to a related point - I know you want to buy within Canada but a big thing that's changed since you were last buying is also cross border transactions - in general, you won't be able to buy sealed product from any US shops until a year after release.
On timing, I'd suggest following posts on HI (number9 seems to have a great line into posting release info as soon as its available) and/or on cardboardconnection.com or other website for when cards are announced/released.
In my experience, the best time to get in pre-orders is as soon as the products are announced. And I'm sure this goes without saying but if you develop a rapport with one of these shops, that'll help quite a bit in getting the products you want.
Final point is that LCSs/AIRs etc. are all getting "allocated" by distributors (Universal in Canada and Southern Hobby/GTS in the US). This means that for "hot" products, LCS and AIRs are getting fewer than their requested amount of product, prices only being set right at release and it's allocated seemingly totally in the discretion of the distributors with prices fluctuating pretty constantly meaning that the LCS/AIR puts in an order for 10 master cases and may only get 4 (or fewer).
It's a really weird time in cards IMO, in part because distributors and manufacturers are trying to capture some of the post release spike in pricing instead of the just the margins between the price they are paying the manufacturer and the cost they are charging to the hobby shops.
Hope that helps!
