Somebody mentioned the Canadians and gonads - let me tell you, if there are any gonads there, they are all extremely small and shrunken!
The reason that Canada limits the ME3 to 3 flights a week is not that they are protecting Air Canada, who doesn’t fly to DXB anyway, but Lufthansa, Air Canada’s Star Alliance Partner.
Canada was keen to negotiate a Trade Treaty with the EU, so helping a German Airline was seen to be useful in making the argument. Hence, the limitations on the number of flights by the ME3 - and, surprise, surprise, a successful Trade Treaty was ratified by the Eu earlier this year.
As for Air Canada, lest we forget, it was Government Owned until 1988 and went bankrupt in 2003, so benefitted again from Government support through the Companies Creditors Arrangement Act (the Canadian equivalent to the US Chapter 11) until it emerged as a private Company again in 2004.
But as in many major Canadian Companies, it isn’t really free to make all its own decisions - as an example, the Federal Government Air Canada Act requires their headquarters to be in Montreal - this clearly isn’t an independent Company free of Governmental interference!
It is also slightly hypercritical for Delta to go on about EK’s use of 5th Freedom rights and then for folks to offer up Air Canada as a paragon of virtue.
Currently, AC uses fifth freedom rights on Santiago-Buenos Aires, and in the past, fifth freedom routes have included: Honolulu-Sydney, London Heathrow-Düsseldorf, Paris-Geneva, Paris-Munich, Paris-Berlin, Frankfurt-Zürich, Zürich-Zagreb, Zürich-Vienna, Zürich-Delhi, Lisbon-Madrid, Brussels-Prague, London Heathrow-Delhi, London Heathrow-Nice, London Heathrow-Bombay-Singapore.
Finally, AC has been heavily censured by the Government for deliberate overbooking and the use of predatory pricing aimed at stifling competition in the market. As a result, for such a huge country, Canada only has 2 national airlines - Air Canada and Westjet, who were themselves subject to a ticket price onslaught from Air Canada when they initially started in an attempt to them out of business - as they did JetsGo and other long gone competitors.
Meanwhile, it's almost impossible to get a seat on one of the 3 weekly EK flights to Dubai….