Bruno,

Another site to check out is flyertalk.com. The forums there are filled with people just chatting up the various airline frequent flyer programs.

Here's a direct link to the Aeroplan forum:

Flyertalk - Air Canada Aeroplan

International taxes are expensive and there just isn't anyway to get around them. As an airline employee I travel for basically free, but when traveling internationally the taxes are still due and they are quite costly, not to mention a major pain to calculate correctly.