A passenger watches as picketing Air Canada flight attendants remained on strike past the deadline in a government-backed labour board’s order to return to work, causing the country’s biggest airline to delay restarting operations at Vancouver International Airport in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada, August 17, 2025.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

An empty Air Canada bag drop area is shown as Air Canada flight attendants strike at Montreal–Trudeau International Airport in Montreal, Saturday, Aug. 16, 2025.
| Photo Credit: AP

Cancelled and delayed Air Canada flights are seen on the departure board at Montreal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport in Dorval, Que., Friday, Aug. 15, 2025. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Brian Mulroney, the former Canadian prime minister who struck a free trade deal with the U.S. but whose legacy was marred by revelations of improper business dealings with an arms dealer, has died.

Mulroney died peacefully surrounded by family, his daughter Caroline Mulroney posted on social media platform X on Thursday, February 29, 2024. He was 84.

Mulroney had a heart procedure in August and was treated for prostate cancer earlier last year, she said in a social media post in late August 2023.

A corporate lawyer turned businessman, Mulroney led the center-right Progressive Conservatives to a historic win in 1984 over the Liberals of Pierre Trudeau.

Justin Trudeau condoles death

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Pierre’s son, shared in a social media post that he was devastated by Mulroney’s death.

“He never stopped working for Canadians, and he always sought to make this country an even better place to call home. I’ll never forget the insights he shared with me over the years – he was generous, tireless, and incredibly passionate,” Mr. Trudeau wrote.

A skilled politician with a gift for public speaking, Mulroney sought to emulate in Canada the conservative leanings of the Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher era by revamping the tax system and selling off government assets.

His nine-year stewardship was marked by negotiations for the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement in 1988, which helped boost Canadian exports, and the introduction of a goods and services tax in 1991. The tax was enormously unpopular politically but helped fix the government’s finances.

Under Mulroney, some government-run corporations were sold off, including Air Canada.

Mulroney took an active interest in foreign affairs, pushing through a treaty with the United States to curb acid rain, spearheading efforts to tackle the 1984 Ethiopian famine and speaking out against apartheid in South Africa.

“You cannot name a Canadian prime minister who has done as many significant things as I did, because there are none,” the author Peter Newman quoted him as saying in an interview.

Mulroney was born on March 20, 1939. He and his wife Mila had four children.

A tall man with a broad smile and booming voice, Mulroney was known for his charm, which University of Toronto history professor Robert Bothwell described as “a unique characteristic that was extremely effective”.

Acid rain treaty

Mulroney formed a close bond with Reagan, the U.S. president at the time, and the two men marked a 1985 summit with a public rendition of the song “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling”.

Mulroney’s ties to Reagan helped him negotiate the landmark acid rain treaty and the trade deal with the U.S., by far Canada’s biggest trading partner.

“It’s quite clear that Reagan was prepared to go out of his way to oblige his friend Brian,” Bothwell said in an interview. “I do think that on relations with the United States, he deserves immense credit.”

Mulroney also presided over two failed bids to change Canada’s Constitution to grant the predominantly French-speaking province of Quebec the status of a distinct society.

The efforts, designed to thwart the Quebec independence movement, fostered deep cleavages between French and English Canada that reverberated politically for decades.

Mulroney won large majorities in 1984 and 1988, in part by bringing together social conservatives in the west of Canada and nationalist voters in Quebec.

But strains began to emerge and the union fell apart in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the creation of the overtly separatist Bloc Quebecois and the western-based Reform Party.

He resigned in 1993 amid record low popularity numbers. The Progressive Conservative party was reduced to just two of 295 seats in the House of Commons in an election later that year – easily the biggest defeat in Canadian history – and never recovered politically.

After leaving politics, Mulroney returned to law and became a partner with the Montreal firm Norton Rose Fulbright.

In 1995, a leaked letter revealed that Royal Canadian Mounted Police had accused Mulroney of having taken kickbacks from German-Canadian arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber on the sale of Airbus airliners to Air Canada in 1988. Mulroney sued the Liberal government and won an apology and damages in 1997.

But in 2010, an inquiry into the affair concluded Mulroney had indeed had inappropriate business dealings with Schreiber. Mulroney told the inquiry there was nothing illegal about the payments, but apologised publicly for taking the money.

“My second biggest mistake in life, for which I have no one to blame but myself, is having accepted payments in cash from Karlheinz Schreiber,” he said in 2007. “My biggest mistake in life — by far — was ever agreeing to be introduced to Karlheinz Schreiber in the first place.”

A close friend of both Reagan and former U.S. President George H. W. Bush, he delivered eulogies at the funerals of both men.

New Delhi:

A differently-abled man, who cannot walk, was forced to drag himself off a plane in Las Vegas when Air Canada could not provide him with a wheelchair. Rodney Hodgins has spastic cerebral palsy and requires a motorised wheelchair.

The 49-year-old and his wife, Deanna Hodgins, had flown to Las Vegas in August to celebrate their anniversary. When the flight attendant told them they could not arrange a wheelchair, he thought they were joking. But they insisted that he would have to get himself off the plane.

The couple said that the flight attendant asked them if they could get to the front of the plane and disembark.

“I said, ‘Of course I can’t. I’m in a wheelchair. I can’t walk'”, he told Canadian media outlets.

But in the end, Mr Hodgins, a hardware salesman from British Columbia, was forced to use his upper body strength and drag him past 12 rows of seats, while his wife held his legs.

“He (flight attendant) said it to me a second time, so that’s when I got up and I told my wife, ‘Move my legs,’ and I dragged myself to the front of the plane,” he told the media.

His wife described the devastating incident in a Facebook post saying that while both of them hurt their back and legs, it hurt a lot more emotionally.

“It took us struggling, in front of a dozen people as some looked away and others looked on with shame, to get him off that plane. He hurt his legs and I hurt my back – emotionally a lot more was hurt,” Deanna Hodgins wrote.

“My husband’s human rights were trampled on and Air Canada won’t respond to us, and never did reach out like they promised. Rod is the most beautiful human on the planet and didn’t deserve this at all,” she added.

She said they had planned the trip for eight months and made sure they took care of all requirements on their end. “Air Canada failed us in every sense.”

Air Canada said that they have apologised to Mr Hodgins and also offered him compensation for the inadequate assistance he received at the Las Vegas airport.

“We use the services of a third-party wheelchair assistance specialist in Las Vegas to provide safe transport on and off aircraft. Following our investigation into how this serious service lapse occurred, we will be evaluating other mobility assistance service partners in Las Vegas,” the statement read.

An Air Canada Airbus A330 approaches for landing in Lisbon, on Sept. 2, 2023. Air Canada says it has apologised to two women who were booted off a flight by security after protesting that their seats were smeared in vomit.
| Photo Credit: AP

Air Canada says it has apologised to two passengers who were escorted off a plane by security after protesting that their seats were smeared in vomit.

The airline said on September 5 that the passengers “clearly did not receive the standard of care to which they were entitled.”

The incident during boarding for an Aug. 26 flight from Las Vegas to Montreal was described in graphic detail by another passenger, Susan Benson of New Brunswick, who said she was in the row behind two women and a man.

“There was a bit of a foul smell but we didn’t know at first what the problem was,” Ms. Benson wrote on Facebook three days later. “Air Canada attempted a quick clean up before boarding but clearly wasn’t able to do a thorough clean.”

Ms. Benson said workers sprayed the area with perfume to hide the smell. The passengers assigned to those seats told a flight attendant that the seat and seatbelt were wet and they could still see vomit. The attendant and a supervisor told them that the flight was full, and they would just have to sit there.

The women were attempting to use blankets and wipes to settle in when one of the pilots showed up, Ms. Benson wrote. She said the pilot told the women, who were on their way to Vienna, that they could leave and book new flights at their own expense “or they would be escorted off the plane by security and placed on a no fly list!”

Ms. Benson said the pilot accused the women of being rude to the flight attendant, which she disputed — “they were upset and firm, but not rude!”

Security then escorted the women off the plane.

Asked if it would dispute any of Ms. Benson’s account, Air Canada did not respond.

In its statement, Air Canada said it was still reviewing the matter on September 5 and had contacted the passengers “as our operating procedures were not followed correctly in this instance. This includes apologising to these customers, as they clearly did not receive the standard of care to which they were entitled, and addressing their concerns.”

Two passengers on an Air Canada flight were escorted off after they refused to sit in poorly cleaned seats that had been covered in vomit. The women passengers were flying to Vienna via Montreal.

A fellow passenger, Susan Benson shared the incident in a now-viral Facebook post. The incident occurred on board a flight from Las Vegas to Montreal on August 26.

“There was a bit of a foul smell but we didn’t know at first what the problem was,” Ms Benson wrote in the post. “Apparently, on the previous flight, someone had vomited in that area. Air Canada attempted a quick clean up before boarding but clearly wasn’t able to do a thorough clean.”

According to Ms Benson, the seatbelt and seat were still visibly wet and there was vomit residue around the seats. The airline tried to mask the smell with the scent of perfume and coffee grinds, but that didn’t help.

“They placed coffee grinds in the seat pouch and sprayed perfume to mask the smell. When the clearly upset passengers tried to explain to the flight attendant that the seat and seatbelt were wet and there was still visible vomit residue in their area, the flight attendant was very apologetic but explained that the flight was full and there was nothing they could do,” she added.

The passenger and crew argued for several minutes before a supervisor came over and reiterated that the passenger would have to stick to the vomit-covered seats as the flight was full.

Moments later, a pilot came down the plane to speak to the passengers, telling them that “they could leave the plane… and organize flights on their own dime, or they would be escorted off the plane by security and placed on a no-fly list!”

The pilot said that the passengers were rude to the flight attendants, but Ms Benson disagreed.

“They were certainly not! They were upset and firm, but not rude!” she wrote.

In fact, a fellow passenger tried to explain the situation, but the pair were then escorted from the plane by security.

“For what? Refusing to sit in vomit for five hours!,” wrote Ms Benson, who said the airline “literally expects” its passengers “to sit in vomit or be escorted off the plane and placed on a no-fly list!”

She concluded the post by saying, “I am ashamed to be a Canadian and ashamed of Air Canada. Shame on you Air Canada! shame on you!”

In a statement to CNN, Air Canada issued an apology to the customers, “as they clearly did not receive the standard of care to which they were entitled.”

“We are reviewing this serious matter internally and have followed up with the customers directly as our operating procedures were not followed correctly in this instance,” the statement continued.

“We remain in contact with them about this matter,” the airline added.

A similar incident took place in July this year when a passenger onboard an Air France plane was left terrified after he spotted a carpet soaked in blood.

Habib Battah took to Twitter to share details about the distressing incident that occurred during his flight from Paris to Toronto.