Odd select box behaviour

This one has me stumped, and it shouldn't.

I'm trying to validate data from a simple select box:

<select size="1" name="country">
<option selected value='United States'>United States</option>
<option value='Canada'>Canada</option>
</select>

When I do:

foreach my $Item (param())
{
	my $input=param($Item);
	print "$Item  --$input--<br>\n";
}

the data is printed out with the expected leading and trailing '--'.

But when I try to validate the incoming data:

my $Country=param('country');
if ($Country ne 'Canada' || $Country ne 'United States')
{
   $Status=1;
   $ErrMsg .= "$Mandatory{country} must be either Canada or United
States.<br>";
}

it *always* falls through into the code block.

I've stripped leading and trailing spaces from $Country. I've chomped 
$Country.

This is driving me crazy, especially since there are only 2 choices in 
the select list, and one of them is already selected.

Am I missing something really stupid here?