I agree with just about everything you guys said.
My family has been with Canadian/Air Canada for well over 30 years now. Standby travel is great...IF you're single and have lots of time. I remember guys taking a week off when I was at AC and ending up going nowhere, because they couldn't make flights with their wife and 2 kids.
That said a single point to point flight is easy to get and dirt cheap when you have all the options of ZED fares. But yes it's still standby and if something comes up like the volcano or a storm or whatever, you're totally F'ed.
Not only that but the load factors have been so tightened. Gone are the days where an airline would fly day after day of 60-75% load factors just to sort of keep up appearances.
If you were to work for AC, you'd want to be in YYZ so that at least you had lots of options. The benefit is being able to go to the airport, with a small bag and find a flight you can get on then just go.
They won't, nor shouldn't hire anyone in this situation though. You'd basically just be mooching. There's enough of these type of guys already that they'd prefer to just weed out but can't. You used to be able to shift trade as much as you wanted and no one seemed to care, but it was never that easy either. I worked with a few guys who would trade all their shifts for 2 months, go travelling come back and worth 13 of every 14 days until they wanted to leave again. But then they knew how to make sure they'd get back in time.
The whole reason for the 6 months no benefit rule is to prevent this all from happening. It's a good rule, coming from someone who has been both inside and outside the situation. I was hired and had to wait 6 months, when I left I hadn't used anything but found out they immediately started hiring a few months later and giving the AC benefits out immediately. Well it wasn't long before guys would fly with multiple people TATL/TPAC and never come back. Not sure their policies now, but if this is your intention don't bother. You'll be wasting everyone's time and being pretty dishonest while you're at it.