Federal transport ministers spent the week calling WestJet–CUPE talks "progressing." Chrystia Freeland used the word as the 72-hour strike clock started. [1] Steven MacKinnon repeated it in Montreal: parties at the table, Federal Mediation Service in the room, hope for a negotiated deal. [2] Hajdu's office would only say the strongest deals happen at the table. [2]

CUPE Local 8125 president Alia Hussain answered that the biggest remaining gap was unpaid work and wage rates, and that it remained "up to WestJet to make the meaningful progress needed to avoid a strike." [2] About 4,400 mainline attendants walked after the August 2, 12:01 a.m. Mountain deadline. WestJet cancelled hundreds of flights. [3]

A tentative agreement on Monday, August 3, ended the walkout and withdrew both notices, pending ratification. [3] Residual cancellations can still run after a handshake on a holiday weekend. That is a table result. It is not proof the "progressing" line described Friday night. The unpaid-ground-time fight is the same one that produced last summer's Air Canada Section 107 intervention. Federal conciliators had been in the room since May. [2] Progressing was the government's weather report. The weekend was the forecast it missed.

-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco