Tax on issuance of equity is the same in the USA. Even worse you cannot use most of capital losses against your normal income taxes, just other capital gains. I think canada does it on sale only.
Not with ISOs though in the US (except a possible AMT issue)
As someone who got those kind of ISOs, it doesn't take much stock to trigger that AMT tax. In practice, ISOs do not have their tax benefits in the majority of cases because of AMT.