What the lag issue generally comes down to is that Canada was an awful choice for a datacenter location. That said, paying for the appropriate tier of service also helps a lot with not getting your packets dropped by Level3 (looking at you, Ormuco).
The good news is that, until SE finally transitions to a new datacenter in a more sensical location (what was wrong with Chicago?), services like BattlePing/PingZapper/WTFast do seem to work for the majority of folks, as they are able to route around Level3/Ormuco squabbling.
