Tough call, both are hypocritical and are only looking to serve their own best interests.
Yes, both parties are looking after their best interests. You look after your best interests, I do the same. AC and emirates ditto. Does this surprise anyone?
I fail to see the hypocrisy in defending Canadian jobs and questioning the economic benefits that emirates says these additional routes will bring to Canada. I think the high paying pilot jobs will be exported to Dubai and the ramp attendant and ticket agent jobs will stay in Canada. If a pilot job moves offshore the Canadian government will collect less income tax and a Canadian community will lose the economic benefit of having a high income earner residing there. That will be the effect of a foreign airline dumping capacity into a Canadian city. emirates adds capacity, someone else drops capacity/frequency. In this case AC is the target but emirates has done this in other parts of the world.
As to the UAE base threat, it isn't a threat at all. It's an attempt to tie emirates commercial interests to Canada's military support in Afghanistan. I resent the connection as I am sure most Canadians do. It seems to me emirates is the hypocrite in this case. emirates cannot claim to want to serve Canadians and threaten their troop deployment at the same time. My guess is the UAE base is safe as long as emirates has a desire to overfly Canadian airspace, but the damage of the emirates/base threat is done.