I'm not sure if you've noticed but many airlines that offer a "premium" product are scaling back and moving more and more into a less premium product as demand is not what it once was. During the winter months yields suck for just about any airline offering a premium seat.
LH as a example pulled the plug on it's YYC operations as a result of yields as it stated. Even here in YYZ we are seeing less and less premium product over time by many carriers and lots of rouging by AC.
UA to EWR from YEG was likely dropped as a result of FI or atleast it contributed as the EWR flight was timed to meet UA TATL flights at EWR. That's a pretty thin route from Alberta as a whole as it cannot support much more than a single daily year round flight on a EMB-190 (AC) and summer only service by WS who has used a 736 most times on the route. So they lost UA's EWR flight, not a major loss in comparison to other growth. I seem to recall YYC losing MIA on WS after just one partial season of the flight launching.
I'm not sure where this slam Edmonton gig comes from but as observer it's really rather annoying to watch. KLM is entering the YEG market, good for them but why so Debbie downer about it?
I bet it's got incentives, just like BA, LH and oh you guessed it KL had when they launched YYC.
But I guess YYC is some super elite market that should have VIP configured Service? Oh wait that was tried, and never got off the ground...
Rant over.