thinking out loud here. just out of curiosity, i had a look at some prices, in cash or points, for flights.
let's say i want to go to YQB in feb for the winter festival. YYJ in business is from around $1175 on rouge flights to around $1500 on a 789 between YVR and YUL.
it's 50,000 aeropesos plus around $200, so the 50,000 points would save between $975 and $1300 depending on the choice of comfort.
buying those points during this "sale" would cost around $800 if i got in at the second tranche at 0.016 CAD. i choose this because i seriously doubt i would get in on the first since they'll be gone in nanoseconds.

so $800 for the points plus tax plus the nearly $200 in "fees" will bring me over $1000. if i chose the rouge flights, the savings would be non-existent. lie-flats on a 789 could save somewhere near $400-500. interesting but not earth shattering.

question about sales tax; if i go to points.com now and look at the purchase price of 10,000 miles, it shows a TOTAL PRICE of $300. No mention of GST or PST. The page gives you the fields to enter your CC information and there's a "purchase now" button which i assume would trigger the transaction. i can't see them adding tax when the summary clearly showed TOTAL PRICE on the purchase page.

when chose a flight on my aeroplan account and need to "top up" with purchased miles, it appears to be 5%, so just GST. Is that correct or is "sales tax" both provincial and federal?