Yes, at absolute maximum resolution for each printer, single pass printing, the Canon is a little slower. I tested this extensively with an 11880 vs the 6100 and at maximum resolution....
It's been pointed out before that the carriage speed of the 6100 is slower than the carriage speed of the 44" and 60" Canons. That's mostly why the 6100 is slower than the 44" and 60" Canons. The larger printers on-board processing capacities are improved and having a hard drive on the printer speeds the spooling process (which in turn reduces network problems that can occur when sending huge files). You really need to compare a 60" machine to a 60" machine or a 44" machine to a 44" machine. Totally not fair to compare a 6100 to a 11880. The 11880 is faster than a 4880 as well...
I've found Epson's 9900 to be neck-to-neck with Canon's 44" printers speed-wise. It gets down the the point where you have to determine when you start the timer. Do you start the timer when you hit print or when the printer actually starts printing? The application rendering process takes quite a while when a conventional print method is used for either printer. The application renders a print file and sends it to the print spooler, then the spooler sends it to the printer and then the printer starts printing it. If you're printing a huge file from Photoshop, that first step can take quite a while - think about Photoshop's print progress dialog that stays up a while after you hit print. Canon's Photoshop printing plug-in's print-while-rendering-and-spooling feature allows it to start printing very quickly (often within 7 seconds from hitting Print) and continues to render and spool while it starts printing. When you're working with huge files from Photoshop this can provide a big speed improvement.
And if you need to reprint an image on a 44" or 60" Canon it's stored on the printer's hard drive so you can instantly start printing another one without having to resend the image from a computer. People that send massive files to 60" printers really like that and find it to be a huge time saver.
I have a few clients that are in the business of selling fine art reproductions on a large scale. They keep a nice database of images from lots of artists and often get orders in the 5-50 range for any particular image. When one of these clients found out that they could keep all of their images on iPF printer hard drives and fulfill orders without sending from a computer they flipped out. Storing print files on iPF hard drives has big workflow speed advantages for a small percentage of users. Most people with those printers don't even know about it (or the nesting capabilities or on-board calibration for that matter).
So there's more to this than just basic square foot per hour numbers. As Andy pointed out, when we look at the bigger picture, Epson and Canon are practically identical speed-wise, and HP is clearly way behind. I really love the 9900 and the 8300 and don't have a favorite between them.