"The bonuses, meant to offset the salary cuts the management team took in 2020, were distributed while the company was calling for a bailout from Ottawa. The government agreed to the package on several strict terms, including guaranteed refunds for customers and a cap on executive pay.

But the terms of the deal do not apply retroactively. Moving forwards, under the bailout agreement, executive compensation at Air Canada must be capped at $1 million per year until all government loans are repaid."

The government did cap the salaries, I've not done any super deep research but from the articles I've read, I've not been able to figure out how this was allowed.. except this article that mentions that they're not applied retroactively, and that the payout was because the exec team went without salary. Not totally clear in the Canadian press how the whole thing actually panned out at the end of the day. (fwiw: I didn't post my original comment as an opinion on the situation, only that a similar conversation is happening in the Canadian press. :))

https://www.thestar.com/business/2021/06/01/air-canada-paid-....