Emirates wanted permission to fly into Canadian airspace without granting Canadian airlines the ability to fly into their airspace.
Reciprical agreements are how the system works.
It's not fair to demand to be able to compete is someone elses market and keep them shut out of their own. Also worth noting that Westjet was one of the biggest complainers. Emirates wanted to handle Canada to US traffic too.
That too is inaccurate, the airspace issue was due to the fact that they wanted unlimited access to Canada and wanted to establish an A380 hub at YYZ. Effectively capacity dumping. Canada rightfully said get-lost and they retaliated by imposing visas, kicking the Cdn. military out of UAE, denying overflight by Defence Minister MacKay's plane.
A little history lesson...
EK could have had 6x weekly to start back in 2002 when the original Canada-UAE Bilateral was signed, but tried to bully the CTA into giving daily rights to YYZ. CTA said why don't you start serving YYZ and we can see about an increase later.
The EK North America Region manager refused and said we'll do daily or nothing... so the CTA said that's your choice.
EY came in and took 3 of those 6 frequencies in 2003. When all this broke among the EK executives the regional manager was promptly fired.
EK decided it better start service with the remaining 3 frequencies or else risk being shut out completely from Canada.
EK needs Canada far more than Canada needs EK... therefore the CTA is in a position to play hardball. EK's temper tantrums are not helping it's cause.
Eventually EK and EY will get reasonable access which may not be exactly what they want... could be something like 28x weekly to Canada:
EK
YYZ - 2x daily
YVR - 1x daily
EY
YYZ - 1x daily
But this will not happen by trying to bully Canada into it.
As a counterpoint... Turkish Airlines was given 3x weekly to start, after one year it was increased to 4x weekly and now in it's third year has further been increased to 5x weekly and expect that by 2014 they will be daily into YYZ.
Canada's policy is to start with 3x weekly and allow the market to grow then grant additional rights.
I am very much looking forward to using the Union Pearson Express service many times a month for my business trips.