COLUMN: Air Canada Is Making You Pay for the War — $50 at a Time

The calculation no one does out loud

Fifty dollars per ticket. For a couple going on vacation, that’s a hundred dollars. For a family of four, two hundred. For a family that visits relatives twice a year, round trip, that’s an extra eight hundred dollars a year. Eight hundred dollars that won’t buy wider seats, no extra luggage, no hot meals. Eight hundred dollars that will buy exactly the same service as before, at the same level of comfort as last week.

Eight hundred dollars for the privilege of flying while a war rages ten thousand kilometers from your destination.

For whom is fifty dollars a fortune?

There’s that grandmother from Laval who flies once a year to see her grandchildren in Vancouver. There’s that student from Sherbrooke who saved up for eight months for an internship in Toronto. There’s that single mother from Gatineau who’s already postponed her vacation twice because of rising grocery prices. For them, fifty dollars isn’t just an adjustment. It’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back—it cancels the trip.

Air Canada knows this. Air Canada doesn’t care. Because Air Canada also knows that the seats will fill up anyway—not with the grandmother from Laval, but with the Bay Street consultant who doesn’t even look at the ticket price.

The numbers don’t lie, but we can silence them

The official justification rests on three pillars: the cost of jet fuel, insurance premiums in conflict zones, and detours caused by airspace closures. Let’s take them one by one.

A barrel of WTI crude was trading at around 70 U.S. dollars in early April 2026. That’s high, to be sure. But it’s below the peak of 120 dollars reached in June 2022, a time when fuel surcharges had already been imposed and then—theoretically—removed when the price fell again. Theoretically.

Insurance: The Actual Cost vs. the Perceived Cost

Insurance premiums for flying over conflict zones are indeed rising. This is a documented, verifiable, indisputable fact. But here’s what the airlines aren’t telling you: these premiums represent a tiny fraction of the total cost of operating a flight. We’re talking about hundredths of a percent on a transatlantic flight. The fifty-dollar surcharge per passenger, multiplied by two hundred passengers per aircraft, generates ten thousand dollars in additional revenue per flight. The actual extra cost of insurance per flight is measured in hundreds of dollars, not thousands.

And yet. And yet, the surcharge is there. In full. Round. Indisputable. Because no one is going to check.

The Predictable Dance of Non-Existent Competition

In a truly competitive market, one player’s price hike would be another’s opportunity. WestJet could announce tomorrow that it’s keeping its prices the same, capture a wave of frustrated customers, and force Air Canada to back down. That’s what economic theory predicts. That’s what the textbooks teach.

That’s not what’s going to happen.

WestJet will monitor the public’s reaction for forty-eight hours, see that the outcry dies down as quickly as it rises, and announce its own surcharge by the end of the week. Maybe forty-five dollars to give the illusion of being less greedy. Maybe fifty-five to test the market’s elasticity. The result will be the same: Canadians will pay more, and no one will be able to go elsewhere.

The Canadian duopoly is no accident—it’s by design

Canada is the only G7 country where two airlines control more than 80 percent of the domestic market. This is no coincidence. It is the result of decades of policies that have shielded domestic carriers from foreign competition, restricted cabotage, and made it virtually impossible for significant new players to enter the market. Canada Jetlines, Swoop, Lynx Air—the list of low-cost carriers that have tried and failed is as long as a Toronto-Vancouver flight.

In a captive market, the surcharge isn’t a price adjustment. It’s a private tax that no one voted for.

Anger That Lasts the Length of a Tweet

Social media will erupt. For twenty-four hours—maybe forty-eight—comments will pour in under Air Canada’s posts. Shame. Scandal. Boycott. The words will be harsh, the emojis furious, the threats sincere. Then life will go back to normal. The business trip can’t wait. Tickets for the July vacation are already in the cart. The boycott will die at the check-in counter.

We’re already paying some of the highest fares in the world

Before this surcharge, a round-trip flight from Montreal to Vancouver cost an average of $650 in economy class. The same route, over a comparable distance, costs the equivalent of $300 in Europe and $250 in the United States. The average Canadian pays double or triple what a European pays for the same distance. And now, they’re adding another fifty dollars. For the war.

The Competition Bureau has published reports. Parliament’s Transport Committee has held hearings. Ministers have expressed concerns. Nothing has changed. Nothing will change. Because you don’t fight a duopoly with concerns. You fight it with competitors. And there aren’t any.

What the CFO Sees When You See Bombs

Somewhere in the Air Canada Tower in Montreal, a CFO watched the same images you did. The same explosions, the same plumes of smoke, the same civilians fleeing. And where you felt horror, he saw a window of opportunity for pricing. Not out of cruelty—out of professional instinct. That’s what the system demands. That’s what shareholders expect. That’s what the quarter demands.

The war in the Middle East is a human tragedy. It is also, in the hushed corridors of airlines, a pricing event. A moment when a surcharge becomes socially acceptable because the context justifies it. No one protests a war surcharge with the same energy they would protest a surcharge just because.

The Emotional Window for the Surcharge

There’s a science behind the timing. You don’t announce a price hike on just any Tuesday in February. You announce it when the world is afraid. When news channels are broadcasting images of missiles. When the prime minister calls a press conference on national security. When fear is in the air, a surcharge in the air becomes acceptable.

And yet, this synchronization between bombs and financial reports should outrage us far more than fifty dollars.

A country too big not to fly

Canada is the second-largest country in the world by land area. From coast to coast, it spans 7,700 kilometers. Taking the train from Montreal to Vancouver takes four days. Driving takes five. Air travel is not a luxury in Canada. It is infrastructure. Treating air travel as an ordinary consumer product, subject solely to market forces, is to ignore a fundamental geographical reality.

When someone from Newfoundland wants to see a medical specialist in Halifax, they fly. When an Indigenous family from Nunavut wants to attend a funeral in Winnipeg, they fly. When a student from New Brunswick accepts a job in Calgary, they fly. And each of them has just had a war tax imposed on them by a private company that is accountable only to its shareholders.

Australia has the same distances—and lower prices

We’re constantly told that high prices are the inevitable consequence of geography. That covering such a vast territory is expensive. That low population density makes roads less profitable. That’s true. But Australia faces the same challenges—a continent-nation with enormous distances—and its domestic airfares are consistently lower. The difference isn’t due to geography. It’s due to competition. Australia has low-cost airlines that are thriving. Canada is killing them off.

The Learned Helplessness of Canadian Consumers

There is a concept in psychology that Martin Seligman called “learned helplessness.” It’s what happens when an individual, repeatedly subjected to situations over which they have no control, simply stops trying to resist. They accept it. They take it in stride. They pay up.

Canadian consumers dealing with airlines are a textbook example of learned helplessness. Decades of excessive prices, poor service, and arbitrary surcharges have produced citizens who sigh, pay, and forget. Not out of weakness. Out of exhaustion. Out of rational calculation: resisting costs more energy than accepting costs money.

Docility as National Policy

We are a people who stand in line. Who wait our turn. Who thank the cashier after paying too much. This politeness, which is our cultural pride, is also our economic Achilles’ heel. The French would block airports. The Americans would file a class-action lawsuit before the end of the week. Canadians will post a disgruntled comment on Facebook, then book their flight. Air Canada knows this by heart.

Ottawa has other priorities—as always

Just as Air Canada announces its surcharge, the federal government is busy managing the diplomatic fallout from the crisis in the Middle East, coordinating the potential evacuation of Canadian nationals, and navigating conflicting pressures from its allies. Asking Ottawa to also deal with the price of airline tickets is like asking a firefighter to mow the lawn while the house is on fire.

Except that the house is still burning. And the lawn never gets mowed.

The Canadian Transportation Agency: The Watchdog That Never Bites

The Canadian Transportation Agency has a mandate to protect the rights of air passengers. It’s part of its mission statement. It’s written on its website. That’s practically all it does: write about it. Complaints are piling up. Processing times are measured in months, sometimes years. The decisions, when they’re finally issued, come with penalties so modest that they amount to an operating cost for the airlines, not a deterrent.

A $50 surcharge on millions of tickets will generate hundreds of millions in additional revenue. The maximum fine the Agency could impose, in the most severe scenario, would represent a fraction of a percent of that amount. The math is simple. Crime pays. The regulator looks on.

Why do we accept that private companies tax us to fund wars?

When the government imposes a tax, there’s a parliamentary debate, a vote, an opposition crying foul, the media analyzing the issue, and citizens protesting. When Air Canada imposes a war surcharge, there’s a press release. No vote. No debate. No mechanism for opposition. A fait accompli wrapped in corporate paper.

Air Canada’s war surcharge is, in its effects, indistinguishable from a tax. It is non-negotiable. It applies to everyone. It is justified by an event over which the payer has no control. The only difference is that a government tax theoretically funds public services. Air Canada’s surcharge funds shareholder dividends.

The Broken Social Contract of Air Travel

There used to be an implicit contract between airlines and citizens: you give us a monopoly on the skies, and we’ll transport you at a reasonable price. That contract is dead. It died when “reasonable price” became an elastic concept, redefined every quarter by financial analysts who have never taken an economy-class flight in their lives. It died when surcharges became permanent and excuses became temporary.

Capping Exceptional Surcharges

In a country that takes consumer protection seriously, any surcharge related to a geopolitical event would be capped by the regulator, indexed to documented actual costs, and accompanied by a verifiable expiration date. The company would have to prove—with figures supported by independent third-party audits—that the surcharge corresponds to the actual additional cost. Not a single dollar more.

This mechanism exists in other sectors. Electric utilities cannot raise their rates without approval from the Régie de l’énergie. Telecommunications are subject to the CRTC. Air travel, however, operates in a regulatory Wild West where the only limit is what the market is willing to pay. And the market accepts everything, because the market has no choice.

Mandatory Cost Transparency

Imagine a world where Air Canada would have to publish, for every surcharge imposed, a detailed breakdown of the actual additional costs: insurance premiums, extra fuel per detour, and adjusted air navigation fees. Imagine that this breakdown were audited by the Transportation Agency. Imagine that the surcharge could not exceed the documented additional cost by more than ten percent.

Imagine that. Then come back to reality. And pay your fifty dollars.

The rise in fares follows the military escalation

If the conflict in the Middle East intensifies—and the signs point in that direction—fifty dollars will be just the first step. Insurance companies will reassess their premiums. New airspace will be closed. Detours will get longer. And Air Canada will come back with a new press release, a new surcharge, a new term for “adjustment.”

The history of airline surcharges is a story of stairs that we climb without ever coming back down. Each crisis adds a step. No lull removes one.

The precedent we set by not reacting

Every surcharge accepted without resistance is an invitation to the next one. It’s the foot-in-the-door principle, applied on an industrial scale. Today, fifty dollars for the war in the Middle East. Tomorrow, thirty dollars for tensions in the South China Sea. The day after tomorrow, twenty dollars for climate instability in the Arctic. The world will never run out of crises. Air Canada will never run out of excuses.

And we’ll never run out of willingness to absorb them.

What We Lose When We Stop Being Outraged

Fifty dollars, in and of itself, won’t ruin anyone. It’s not the money that should alarm us—it’s the mechanism. It’s the idea that a private company can, without consultation, without approval, and without recourse, impose a levy on millions of citizens by citing a geopolitical event. It’s the idea that this surcharge will be accepted, absorbed, and forgotten. It’s the idea that next time will be even easier.

The true cost of this surcharge is yet another piece of our collective ability to say no. A piece that won’t come back when the war ends. A piece that won’t appear on any financial statement, but that will be sorely missed the day the surcharge is a hundred dollars, two hundred dollars, or whatever they want.

On Monday morning, you’ll pay—and that’s exactly the problem

On Monday morning, tickets will cost fifty dollars more. By Monday noon, the first passengers will have already booked at the new price. By Monday evening, the surcharge will have become the new normal. By Tuesday, no one will be talking about it anymore.

Air Canada is counting on that. Air Canada is right to count on it. Because we’re a country that takes the blows with grace, that accepts surcharges with politeness, that turns every outrage into a shrug.

Fifty dollars. It’s not much. That’s exactly why it’s intolerable.

Signed, Jacques PJ Provost