I agree that in general it would be more tricky to prove that the delayed flight caused you much in terms of damages given what you have said. If you could show that client meetings had to be rescheduled and there was a business loss as a result of that, then perhaps you could claim something going the Montreal Convention route.
The next step would be to inquire about further details about the nature of the delay. If they stone wall you or say they consider the matter closed, your next route really depends on how important it is to you to get the APPR compensation owed. The fast (albeit time consuming) route, is to sue the airline in small claims court to collect damages pursuant to APPR. You will serve the authorized agent of the airline with papers telling them they are being sued for breach of APPR, where you will summarize why you believe they are in breach of compensation. At that point the ball is in the airline's court. They could either settle right away to avoid being dragged to court to fight the charges, or could fight them. The downside is you have to spend some time doing research, filing paperwork and spending a little bit of money out of pocket to file the claim. Gabor Lukacs and the folks over at
Air Passenger Rights Canada. The other option is to simple file an appeal to the
Canadian Transportation Agency. Here you'll fill out a form that takes about 15 minutes where you state the circumstances of the delay/cancellation, the airlines response and why you think you are entitled to APPR compensation. The CTA will then review your case and may rule in your favour. The benefit of this process is it's fast to apply and you keep your claim open. The downside is that the queue for receiving a judgement is notoriously long. For instance, I submitted an appeal when Air Canada gave me a $300 e-voucher for a 16 hour delay back in September and as of time of writing I'm 21,000 in queue (I joined the queue at 35,000).
In terms of which process is better it truly is up to you. My circumstances are unique, I'm a PhD student in Australia so don't have the time to take them to court at Hornsby Council court so filing a claim against the APPR makes sense in my circumstance. Another benefit I see is that if the CTA is inundated with complaints that airlines aren't abiding by the APPR, they may be force to be stricter in their enforcement of the regulations. After all, having an army of arbitrators looking over cases is inefficient, particularly if in a majority of the cases it is determined that the airline has erred. This is what happened in Europe when EU261 became law - airlines would try and use excuses like saying maintenance was outside their control.I will reply to AC as to the nature of the cancellation but I'm quite certain that they will say "technical issue".
-RooFlyer88