What Do Canadian Soldiers Have To Do With UAE Airlines?
In what the Globe and Mail calls “a remarkably blunt diplomatic gambit,” the United Arab Emirates are giving the boot to a not-so-secret Canadian military staging base near Dubai, because Canada refuses to grant more landing rights at Canadian airports for UAE-based airlines Emirates and Etihad. Air rights negotiations and geopolitics are unusual bedfellows, but the battle between the Arab airlines, Air Canada and the Canadian government has been anything but business as usual. The fast-expanding airlines claim that the six flights per week to Canada allowed under the current agreement are far less than demand warrants. But Air Canada argues that Emirates and Etihad are not responding to Canadian consumer demand for travel to the Emirates, they’re simply trying to steal lucrative international traffic and boost the status of Dubai and Abu Dhabi as global air transport hubs. Talks between Canada and the UAE have broken down, with the federal government telling the Globe that “a huge gap
