It looks like canadian government's protectionism of AC has always been detrimental to canadian aviation. For example, look at the demise of Canada 3000 in 2001. The government refuse to help them, even though they were in a good position to survive.
Of course, there is guys on this forum, who are smarter than me, what concerns the details. But could it not be actually good for canadian aviation in the long run, if AC disapears? May be, there would be a lots of start ups after that, which could actually survive, if they did not have to compete with government's money being directly or indirectly pumped into AC.