If you go to the taxon’s history page you can see when the name was attached to Canada and who did it, eg https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47680/history
The place name preference is mostly for situations like in Latin America, where the same species may have a different Spanish common name in different countries/regions. So if you choose a place for your name preference, it uses the default common name attached to that place, regardless of your account’s locale. Since there’s only one name for Lycogala epidendrum that’s attached to Canada, that’s the one you see.