Wow, Shareholder, I thought all the little people up north were meek and mild-mannered. Guess not. As you said yourself, "the industry sets itself up" and those of us below the 49th parallel merely take advantage of that. I suspect that you are just envious of your southern neighbors' myriad opportunities to bank hundreds of thousands of miles a year by churning credit cards with no annual fees. I feel for you, as well as those FTers in other lands, who are forced to fly to earn their miles.

As for the BoA Aeroplan card, at 25K a pop, it's no great loss. My wife and I will just transfer the 125K AMEX MR points we each just earned (Business Gold 75K and Platinum 50K) to Aeroplan. Both cards are churnable, by the way.