Winner: Air Canada vs. flight attendants. The standoff between Canada’s largest airline and its 10,000 flight attendants was one of the biggest stories of the year. Ground pay, the work done by flight attendants while planes aren’t in the air, was a major sticking point during contract talks. With little progress made at the negotiating table, the workers went on a three-day strike, picketed outside major airports, and watched as Air Canada was forced to cancel hundreds of flights a day. Ottawa tried to invoke a back-to-work order to end the strike (and faced heavy criticism). The gambit failed when the union ignored the order and stayed on the picket line, but a tentative agreement between the airline and the union had workers back on the job within a few days.
Runner-up: Hollywood vs. AI. OpenAI signed on to help make Critterz, a feature-length AI-generated animated movie, while startups like Canada’s Moonvalley AI pitched Hollywood studios on their “ethical” AI video generator. Actors, writers, and directors have pushed back hard, but given the financial upside for studios, this genie may be out of the bottle on AI-generated content.
Runner-up: Ostrich farm protesters vs. Ottawa. In arguably the strangest face-off of 2025, protesters in B.C. camped outside for days to try to save a flock of ostriches that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency ordered to be culled over bird flu concerns. The culling of the 300-odd ostriches became a bit of a cause célèbre for the right-wing activists and politicians, including RFK Jr.