I am an American, so forgive me, but I was under the impression that UWaterloo was also regarded as one of, if not the best, CS schools in Canada. I would argue that many of the more elite universities have managed to beat back this trend for the most part, as I do not believe that Stanford or MIT are graduating substandard computer science students.
I agree with this statement. Other schools (perhaps not as highly regarded as the ones you mentioned) such as Texas A&M do hardcore, low-level C++ courses, compiler stuff, etc. for both CS and CE students as core requirements. They lightened the requirements several years back to compete with other schools, but changed back to them when they realized how soft their students had become. Of course, Bjarne Stroustrup is the chair of the CoE CS program at TAMU... so that may have a lot to do with it.
