(I'm responding here to the theme of a few recent posts touching on benefits for CC holders, but just quoting this one for brevity)

I'll make a couple of observations about the upcoming changes that are purely personal opinions and not based on any of the things I heard that led me to create this thread:

• I do expect them to make the program somewhat more favourable towards CC spend than currently, just because that's the way the industry is going, and CCs do make a lot of money
• The US credit card market is much more lucrative than the Canadian one. A few years ago, I spent some time working in the CC business. Some people who had spent a lot more time on that business than me indicated that an average dollar spent on a credit card was about twice as profitable for the issuer as one in Canada, due primarily to higher interchange (swipe/transaction fees) and higher revolve rates (percentage of customers carrying a balance and paying interest), without significantly higher overall loss rates - for some reason, I was told, a higher proportion of creditworthy Americans who do eventually pay you back still carry a balance
• The amount that AC wants to incentivize CC spending is dependent on the amount of money it can capture from that spending, which is only a piece of what the card issuer can generate to begin with. So I don't think we'll see as extreme bias towards CC spending as, say, when AA revamped their program

Lastly, I'll note that AC/Aeroplan is the absolute ironclad proof that the concept of loyalty programs holding significant value outside of an airline is garbage. Aeroplan's stock tanked when AC said they were going to walk away, because coalition loyalty programs have very little draw. People love airline credit cards because travel is aspirational and thinking about it is fun; the process of flying is also often miserable, so promising people a better experience when they do fly is very attractive. With points being devalued, airline lounges ever more crowded, and so on, we may be testing the limits of how far airlines can go before people decide they're not getting value out of their expensive airline rewards cards, but it's quite clear that without an airline, loyalty programs are nowhere near as attractive.