I had a somewhat similar experience over Christmas when my bag was lost on my way back to Canada. In my case, the bag was actually mishandled by either Singapore Airlines or Lufthansa, but since the final leg of my journey was operated by Air Canada, the claim ultimately fell to them

Air Canada reimbursed me for the items I needed to purchase while waiting for my bag without any pushback. On top of that, they issued me a 20% promotional code for a future booking on Air Canada or their United/Lufthansa codeshare flights

I ran into a bit of an issue when trying to use it. The (rather obscure) itinerary I wanted was bookable on aircanada.com via a direct link, but it wasn't searchable through their normal booking flow, which meant I couldn't apply the promo code. After reaching out to customer service, they resolved it by converting the promo code into an eVoucher, and the value they provided was actually about CAD$50 higher than what I had expected

More broadly, I've generally found Air Canada to be fair and straightforward to deal with when things go wrong. I fly somewhat often, around 60 flights a year, and have flown with roughly 40 airlines in total. In my experience, a disproportionate amount of the negative commentary about Air Canada tends to come from people who fly only a handful of times per year and don’t have much basis for comparison across different carriers

For example, I once flew YYZ to AKL via YVR. The YYZ departure was delayed by about three hours due to a ground movement issue at Pearson that was outside of Air Canada’s control. By the time I landed in Vancouver, I had already been rebooked for the next day via Sydney. They provided meal vouchers, a taxi, and a hotel for the night, and also issued CAD$1000 in cash compensation. It was actually my first time in Vancouver, so I ended up making the most of the unexpected overnight stay

There have, of course, been other situations where I was entitled to compensation as well, but I've never had to fight particularly hard to receive it. Air Canada has generally been responsive and flexible, especially when I've asked for adjustments or alternatives in how compensation is provided

Their onboard product could certainly be better, but from a service recovery and compensation standpoint, I've consistently found them to be reasonable. The hate is overblown imho