I suppose if one is used to being robbed, after a while, it doesn't feel so bad:
Aeroplan charges 60,000 miles + $900 CAD for a return redemption North America-Europe-North America on LH. Assuming each mile is worth $0.02 CAD, that's another 45,000 miles you have to pay in the form of cash co-pay for a total of 105,000 miles. While you may remember the 60K miles level has not changed since as far as you can remember, surely, you can also recall there was no $900 worth of co-pay either back then. The effective mileage cost of such a trip is in fact 105,000 miles even though the base cost didn't change.
Likewise, I posted Iberia Plus redemption as a point of comparison. Iberia Plus and British Airways Executive Club share the Avios program, their equivalent of Aeroplan for which you can transfer your BA miles to IB, one to one. As you know, Canadians have a number of ways of earning BA miles, namely though RBC's Avion Card or the BA co-brand Visa, or through HSBC, or AMEX Rewards or SPG. Essentially, you can earn those Iberia Plus miles simply using your Canadian based BA credit cards, then transfer them 1 to 1 to Iberia without any fee or surcharge and the transfer is instantaneous. More importantly, Iberia does not charge any fuel surcharge on its own metal regardless of your elite status. While my screenshot is in Spanish, they have an English website which you can use to redeem your points, so don't be afraid if you can't read Spanish. So the cost comes to 22,000 miles + $185 USD, which is about 22,000 miles + $240 CAD. Using the same formula, $245 CAD is really worth 12,000 miles most of which is actual taxes that you have to pay anyway. The effective cost of the award is 34,000 miles roundtrip vs. 105,000 miles with Aeroplan.
In a nutshell, even in Y, you are paying more than triple of what would have cost you in miles vs. another frequent flyer program readily available in Canada via numerous other credit cards via RBC, HSBC or AMEX. Not to mention, BA often runs bonus promotions for points transfers from these banks, sometimes up to 50%.
The bottom line is Aeroplan can afford to make these changes by killing the sweet spots of the award chart because it knows the sheep won't do anything about it. They also use backdoor ways to increase the effective award cost without changing the number of miles required in other instances, like return trip to Europe in Y.