I verified with my Canadian cell phone, no problems. I also later verified by paypal because I'm starting to ship things (Please, please, please CP - work something out!!), but never had an issue verifying a Canadian number (my mom used her Canadian home number to verify).
They want people to verify to curb multiple accounts... For lower value items people were creating many accounts to keep getting items for free, while not contributing back to the Listia community. Once they no longer had "free points" left on one account, they hopped to another. Worse yet, they could "bid" on auctions from other accounts to amass large amounts of credits on one account & receive bonus referral points on top. The influx of large amounts of "new" credits flooding the "Listia economy" also causes inflation.
Verification helps to reduce this.

