I too would love to see additional flights to U.S. destinations, (with Chicago heading the list, but also New York and either Dallas or Houston). But we clearly aren't getting anywhere with the U.S. majors. Their priorities are elsewhere.
I hope EIA is talking to U.S. LCCs and hybrid carriers like JetBlue (B6 does operate to YVR). While U.S. low cost carriers have always shown little desire to fly to Canada, it's interesting that plenty of Canadian low cost carriers operate to the U.S. (Swoop, Lynx, Flair for example). I wonder if EIA subsidies could be used to lure one of the U.S. LCCs north to establish a route that isn't currently served.
Breeze in particular has a business model designed around connecting cities that don't currently have any links, rather than going head to head with U.S. mainline carriers. This is different from the strategy of, say, Flair, which does go head to head with mainline carriers on certain routes (particularly domestic).