AOG-YYZ. Points taken. I cannot claim to have worked for either Canadian or Air Canada, and I appreciate your insider input. I should like to make a couple of points though as I think perhaps you have drawn some conclusions from my previous posts.
Indeed it sounds as though many jobs would have been lost in Canada had the Onex deal worked out. I was opposed to any merger of Canadian and Air Canada regardless of the party doing the taking over. I should have liked to have seen the Canadian Government relaxed the laws regarding foreign ownership of Canadian air carriers such that Canadian Airlines might have been saved by investment from its oneworld allies. As I mentioned earlier I think Canada as a nation needs to invest in itself to a greater extent and I certainly didn't see the answer in selling out the entire industry to American Airlines.
Though in latter years Canadian Airlines may have benefited from route approval from the Canadian Government, for many years this was not the case. Decades of previous preferential treatment to the, at the time, state owned Air Canada/TCA resulted in Candian's predecessors (mainly Canadian Pacific) being given the leftovers. The reason Canadian had a presence in the Pacific at all was because these were the only routes Mr. Howe allowed CP to serve when he divided up the world between TCA and CP in the 1940s. For years CP struggled to make these routes profitable and I found it a particularly bitter pill to swallow when Air Canada began whinging and bitching in the late 1980s when it realised that after years of little traffic, suddenly there were profits to be made over the Pacific. Remember that all the while AC had had a virtual monopoly on the profitable North Atlantic market despite CP's efforts to obtain the rights to compete. Also, I think you'll find that Canadian was not given route approval until long after they had the rights to fly to LGW as a result of their purchase of Wardair. This perhaps was the only jewel in Wardair's crown.
Finally, please do not assume that because I am from Calgary I am some sh*t kicking cowboy neo-nazi Reformer/Alliance freak. I am on this forum to discuss my views on the airline industry, not to enter into party politics. In the meantime I'll avoid stooping to the same level by not making wild assumptions about Torontonians.
Cheers.