Empress, that is my conclusion as well, go standby which is permitted for once!
As a result of all of this I am very disappointed that the AC SE staff did not even suggest this as an option to me. They only quoted me a fare differential over $1100, which is far more than a simply YOW-YYZ return ticket in J. It seems they wanted me to upgrade to full Y.
This lack of constructive advice is very troubling to me. Are they not allowed to offer such advice? or are they simply stupid. If either, I take this as a serious impediment to the service standards I expect as a very loyal customer!