Archive August 19, 2025

Air Canada, the country’s largest carrier, is set to resume service after reaching an agreement with its unionised flight attendants.

The deal, reached early on Tuesday morning, ends the first strike by the airline’s cabin crew in nearly 40 years.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) issued a statement explaining that its mediation with the airline and its low-cost affiliate Air Canada Rouge had arrived at a successful conclusion.

“Unpaid work is over. We have reclaimed our voice and our power,” the union wrote. “When our rights were taken away, we stood strong, we fought back — and we secured a tentative agreement that our members can vote on.”

The walkout began on Saturday and lasted nearly four days, leading to disruptions in travel for the nearly 130,000 travellers each day who take Air Canada.

The strike also forced the company to withdraw its third-quarter and full-year earnings guidance. In early trading on Tuesday morning, in the wake of the news that the strike had ended, shares of Air Canada rose four percent. But they had lost approximately 14 percent of their value so far this year.

The carrier said it would gradually resume operations, with flights taking off once again by Tuesday evening.

Air Canada warned, however, that a full restoration of its services may require a week or more. Some flights will remain cancelled over the next seven to 10 days while the flight schedules are stabilised.

Customers with cancelled flights can choose between a refund, travel credit or rebooking on another airline.

What was the dispute about?

CUPE represents nearly 10,400 flight attendants employed by Air Canada, and the union had been negotiating for months with the airline to address issues including “unpaid work, work rules, and poverty-level wages”.

The union pointed out that wages had not kept pace with the cost of inflation and that cabin crew members were not offered “ground pay”: compensation for all the work done before a flight’s doors close and after a flight lands.

That includes no pay for getting passengers boarded, assisting travellers with baggage and seating, and conducting safety checks.

CUPE noted last week that 99.7 percent of its members voted in favour of the strike.

In announcing the end of the walkout, CUPE explained that negotiations had stretched from 7pm local time (23:00 GMT) on Monday to 4:23am (08:23 GMT) the next day.

“We are required to advise our membership that we must fully cooperate with resumption of operations,” the union wrote in an announcement on Facebook.

A tense showdown

Until the deal was announced, it was not clear whether the impasse would be quickly resolved. On Monday, Mark Hancock, CUPE’s national president, said there was “no limit” to his commitment to the fight.

“We’re going to stay strong. We’re going to stay committed to making sure those workers can do the job that they love doing and actually be able to afford a roof over their heads,” Hancock said. “And if it means folks like me going to jail, then so be it.”

In a rare act of defiance, the union remained on strike even after the Canada Industrial Relations Board, a federal labour board, declared its action unlawful.

On Monday, the board called for the flight attendants to return to work and for the union to submit to arbitration.

But with the flight attendants refusing, a three-way standoff developed between the workers, the company and the government.

The union had asked the government not to intervene, in case it gave the airline the upper hand in negotiations.

In an apparent effort to address that argument, Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu also promised on Monday to place pressure on Air Canada by investigating allegations of unpaid work in the airline sector.

“I’ve also heard the allegations of unpaid work. It’s unacceptable. Nobody should work for free in this country. In fact, we expect to get paid for the work we perform,” Hajdu said in a video on social media.

“That’s why I’ve ordered a probe into the allegation of unpaid work in the airline sector. We will start this probe immediately.”

In recent years, unions in the aerospace, construction, airline and rail sectors have renewed their efforts to push employers for higher pay, improved conditions and better benefits amid a tight labour market.

Travellers express frustration

While Air Canada works towards resuming full service, travellers have expressed frustration with the ongoing flight cancellations.

As of Monday, the analytics firm Cirium estimated that nearly 1,219 domestic flights in Canada and 1,339 international flights had been suspended since Thursday as a result of the strike.

Retiree Klaus Hickman was among those who missed a flight to Toronto earlier in the week. While he rebooked on another airline, he was concerned about returning to Calgary on time for a connecting flight to Germany.

Hickman sympathises with workers demanding better pay but is worried about his own health and travel challenges.

“They want to get more money to survive. And so it is with everybody else,” he said.

The rebel group M23 and the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have failed to sign a final peace accord scheduled for Monday after the rebels accused the Congolese army of breaking an earlier agreement intended to lead to a full peace deal.

Monday’s scheduled talks were part of a series of negotiations mediated by Qatar. Both sides were required to be in Doha to sign what was supposed to be a concluding peace pact.

However, the M23 announced on Sunday, the eve of the signing, that its representatives were not in Doha as agreed, raising fears among analysts that the talks might be derailed altogether.

On Monday, the group appeared to walk back its decision, promising to send representatives in the coming days.

The DRC has been mired in conflict with the Rwanda-backed M23 for several years. In December 2023, the armed group merged with another militia, the Congo River Alliance (AFC), and is also referred to as AFC-M23.

Fighting escalated significantly in January after the group seized vast swaths of territory in mineral-rich eastern DRC, including the regional capital, Goma. Despite agreeing to secure peace, violence has continued on the ground, with more than 300 people killed in an assault last week.

Here’s what to know about the M23, who backs them, and the Doha peace agreement:

What is the Doha peace agreement?

It’s an agreement between the M23 and, to a lesser extent, Rwanda, on the one hand, and the DRC on the other. Rwanda is accused of backing the rebels by Kinshasa, a United Nations Expert Group, and the United States.

Several peace deals have been mediated by the DRC and Rwanda’s neighbours, including Angola and Kenya, but none have managed to hold.

In March, Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in Doha hosted a meeting between Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame, whereafter both leaders called for a ceasefire. Since then, subsequent talks have been held with the DRC and the M23.

Separately, the US, in June, brokered a ceasefire agreement between the two countries’ foreign ministers in Washington, but without the M23. In the deal, both countries agreed to work together on a joint security commission, guarantee the safe return of displaced people, and cease support of non-state armed groups. Rwandan troops, believed to have been fighting with the M23 as it escalated fighting this year, were to withdraw.

Although the US-brokered deal and the Qatar-led talks are separate, they are tightly linked. Rwanda’s Kagame has said they are “both sides of the same coin”.

On July 19, the M23 and the DRC signed a preliminary “Declaration of Principles” in Doha, promising to end fighting and commit to a comprehensive peace deal. They agreed to exchange captured prisoners and restore state control in rebel-controlled areas, Qatar’s minister of state, Mohammed bin Abdulaziz bin Saleh al-Khulaifi, told reporters. There’s no report yet of a prisoner exchange, which is a priority of the M23.

As per the declaration, negotiations were required to begin on August 8, and a final peace deal signing was set for August 18.

Both sides seemed to interpret the declaration separately, however. Although the DRC government said the deal meant the M23 would withdraw, rebel leader Bertrand Bisimwa said in a statement on X that the declaration was “not a question of withdrawal but of mechanisms for empowering the state, enabling it to assume its prerogatives and obligations”.

“We are in Goma with the population and we are not going to get out,” Lawrence Kanyuka, M23 spokesperson, told The Associated Press news agency.

The DRC government, meanwhile, has insisted on the M23’s withdrawal. Officials say Kinshasa wants the issue of prisoners to be negotiated as part of the final deal agreement, not as a condition for more talks.

Why did the M23 stall the August 18 talks?

M23 rebels accuse the Congolese government of continuing to attack rebel positions, and claim that Nzimbira and Kanyola in South Kivu province were attacked with heavy artillery and drones over the weekend.

In a Sunday statement on X, Kanyuka said there could be no negotiating without the DRC fully honouring the earlier agreement, including releasing captives.

“The AFC/M23 hereby reaffirms its full commitment to the Doha Peace Process and emphasizes that only the full implementation of the Declaration of Principles will enable the next round of talks to proceed, which should be based on the root causes of the conflict,” his statement read.

On Tuesday, Bisimwa, the group’s head, appeared to walk back the earlier position and said in a post on X that “a technical team from our Movement will travel to Doha to review the practical arrangements for the application of the ceasefire and the release of prisoners in accordance with said declaration.”

The Reuters news agency, quoting an M23 official, said the group was sending a team due to Qatar’s pressure, and did not expect much from the talks. “Our delegation will simply reinforce the need to implement these measures before we can engage in negotiations,” the source is quoted as saying.

There are no public records of the number of M23 captives held by Kinshasa, but their release appears pressing for the group. Since March, when the US brokered the first talks, Rwanda appears to have reduced military involvement in the DRC, according to a report by the US-based Institute for the Study of War.

Analyst Nicodemus Minde of the Institute for Security Studies told Al Jazeera that the M23’s stalling could be a strategic way of pushing its demands for Kinshasa to release captives. Ultimately, though, Minde added, “There’s a lot of pressure to honour the agreements [in Washington and Doha]”, and that likely prompted the group’s about turn.

What is the M23, and who backs them?

The M23 rebels are the most well-known militia among dozens of armed groups fighting for control in the DRC’s east, which is abundant in minerals.

Its fighters were originally recruited in the Congolese civil wars and were later integrated into the military. However, in 2012, some 300 of them claimed they were being poorly treated in the DRC army and formed the rebel group. They claim to be fighting for the rights of Congolese Tutsis, who are of Rwandan descent and make up a minority in the DRC.

Although the M23 was considerably pushed back by a coalition of DRC military and UN forces following its offensives in 2012, the group resurfaced in 2022, seemingly more equipped. In January this year, its fighters launched lightning offensives from their position in the east, seizing several towns and cities before capturing Goma and Bukavu, the capitals of North Kivu and South Kivu provinces, respectively. Some 3,000 people were killed in the battle, and hundreds of thousands were displaced.

In 2023, a UN Group of Experts report found that neighbouring Rwanda finances the group. The US also accuses Kigali of the same. Rwanda no longer denies the accusations but accuses the DRC of backing an anti-Kagame militia, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). Some 4,000 Rwandan troops reportedly fought alongside the M23 in the eastern DRC war earlier this year. Both countries have a complex rivalry that goes back to the Rwandan genocide and the Congo Wars that came after.

What has the DRC said?

The Congolese government did not directly respond to the M23’s accusations on Sunday. In a statement on X, spokesperson Patrick Muyaya reaffirmed that Kinshasa was committed “to the peace process and reiterates its dedication to the strict respect of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the State in accordance with the constitution”.

However, Congolese army spokesperson Sylvain Ekenge said in a statement last week that the M23 launched  “multiple attacks” on army positions in the east of the country. The attacks were “almost daily”, he said, and signified an “intentional and clear violation” of the peace agreements signed in Doha and Washington, DC.

The UN last week also accused the M23 of killing at least 319 civilians, including children, in Rutshuru, in attacks in the eastern North Kivu province. UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk called it one of the “largest documented death tolls” since the M23’s resurgence in 2022. He condemned the violence, stating: “All attacks against civilians must stop immediately, and all those responsible must be held to account.”

On the topic of releasing M23 captives, an unnamed government source quoted by Reuters said the request was a complicated prerequisite. The DRC would rather it be hashed out in negotiations, rather than be a condition to continue the talks, the source said.

How has Qatar reacted?

Majed al-Ansari, a spokesperson of the Qatar foreign ministry, while speaking to journalists on Tuesday, said that although timelines had been missed, there was still hope for the peace deal.

“The good thing is that both sides are engaging very positively,” he said. “We are engaging with them closely, and we are committed to the process, and I think the parties have shown a level of willingness to agree that was not there before.”

The spokesperson did not, however, give a new date for the signing of a peace deal.