Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau was slammed by Prime Minister Mark Carney and Quebec’s authorities on Wednesday for delivering an English-only message of condolence after Sunday’s deadly plane crash in New York.
Rousseau is being summoned to testify on the Home of Commons official languages committee after he shared a four-minute condolence video on-line that solely included two French phrases — “bonjour” and “merci.”
The Workplace of the Commissioner of Official Languages reported receiving 84 complaints about Rousseau’s video as of Tuesday afternoon.
Carney, talking to reporters earlier than the weekly Liberal caucus assembly in Ottawa, mentioned the choice to launch the video message solely in English confirmed a “lack of judgment and lack of compassion.”
“We proudly stay in a bilingual nation, and corporations like Air Canada significantly have a duty to all the time talk in each official languages, whatever the scenario,” Carney mentioned.
“I’m very upset in, as others are, rightly so, on this unilingual message of the CEO of Air Canada. It doesn’t matter the circumstances, however significantly in these circumstances.”
The flight was carrying passengers from Montreal to LaGuardia airport, and lots of the travellers and crew — together with Antoine Forest, one of many two pilots killed — have been French-speaking Canadians.
Forest and fellow pilot Mackenzie Gunther died when the Air Canada Jazz flight they have been touchdown at LaGuardia collided with a fire truck on the runway Sunday night.
Quebec Premier François Legault identified that Rousseau had dedicated to studying French in 2021 and referred to as for him to resign.
“If he nonetheless does not communicate French immediately, it is disrespectful to his workers and to his francophone clients. So sure, I feel that if he does not communicate French, he ought to resign,” Legault mentioned forward of query interval on the nationwide meeting.
Quebec Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette described Rousseau as a “repeat offender,” saying he has a historical past of disrespect for French as an official language. He additionally referred to as on Air Canada to pressure him to resign.
An Air Canada spokesperson mentioned Rousseau needed to talk in particular person and to take action earlier than going to the crash website.
“Regardless of his efforts, his capacity to talk French doesn’t enable him to speak such a delicate message in that language as he would really like. We due to this fact used subtitles to permit everybody to obtain his message straight,” Christophe Hennebelle mentioned in French in an e mail.
This is not the primary time Rousseau has landed in bother over his grasp of French. After he delivered a speech to a enterprise crowd in Montreal in late 2021 that was nearly solely in English, he offended many by stating that he’d lived within the metropolis for 14 years with out having to talk its majority language.
Conservative MP Joel Godin, the get together’s official languages critic, identified Wednesday that Air Canada “should respect the official languages (legislation).”
Carney mentioned Canadian officers proceed to work in shut collaboration with their American counterparts to find out how this crash occurred.
This report by The Canadian Press was first printed March 25, 2025.