Check Virtual Brokers. They have lower account minimum to get flat rate right away (it's 50k with both Scotia iTrade and TD Waterhouse). There is always QuesTrade, with no account minimums, but read different user forums before you jump in, customer satisfaction with them is reported all over the map. For Canadian issues these two forums are much better than ET:
Commission wise IB is the worst broker for trading Canadian stocks, unless you are only interested in pricier blue chips. IB's commissions were designed during the dot com era when every US stock was at U$200+. On the other hand no other Canadian broker comes even close when it comes to technology. They all use AxisPro from Nexa Technologies as a premium platform, no match for IB's TWS. TDW is testing Think Or Swim, but I don't think it's available yet.
RBC doesn't even offer AxisPro, as far as I know, only web order entry. They also used to have outrageous margin limits, minimum $5 for a stock to get 50% margin. The only brokers that at least try to go high tech are:
