Ah I mean, you can optimise a bit.
Example - replace half XAW.TO in your RRSP with VTI, which is US domiciled and hence in USD - means you don't lose 15% of your underlying dividends to the IRS. Replace the other half with XEF + some emerging market fund.
XAW is a wrapper ETF that just holds a load of other ETFs, and sometimes that isn't efficient. But it is not the end of the world.
Say you have $100k of XAW in an RRSP, and all of it is affected by this problem. It yields just over 2%. You'll be losing 15% of 2% = 0.3% (note that this is invisible to you; so actually the yield would be ~2.5% if not for the foreign tax). The MER is 0.2%.
If you moved that to VTI (or IVV, the iShares S&P one that is actually held by XAW) + XEF + whatever, you'd get 2.5% yield not 2.15%.
There are costs to making the switch - dealing fees, currency conversion fees (both ways - it has to come back) (though this can be mitigated by using Norbert's Gambit rather than a shitty broker exchange rate - you buy an interlisted stock or ETF, and 'journal' from one currency to the other - so you pay dealing fees not a poor exchange rate).
So then you put your US stuff in your RRSP, EAFE/emerging stuff in Canadian ETFs in your TFSA, and once all that's full the Canadian stuff goes unregistered (yay dividend tax credit).
Saves $300 a year on $100k, give or take. Edit: But, there is faff to get there! If your portfolio isn't that large, don't worry about it. You can always split it out later.
