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Jamie Sarkonak: Francophones right to be mad at Air Canada CEO

A statement of condolences in French is the least he could do to show respect for francophone pilot killed at LaGuardia

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Captain Antoine Forest and First Officer Mackenzie Gunther appear to have spent their last moments decelerating their Air Canada Jazz plane as it barrelled towards a firetruck on the LaGuardia Airport runway last week. Passengers reported feeling the brakes hit hard right before the collision, and one even hit his head on the seat in front of him. That may be why everyone who was on board is still alive except for the pilots, who took an unsurvivable impact.

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Both men made the same sacrifice, but only one of their families heard Air Canada’s subsequent condolence message — delivered in English by CEO Michael Rousseau in a four-minute video — in their language. Forest was a francophone, but Rousseau couldn’t muster anything beyond “bonjour” and “merci” to honour the pilot’s loved ones, a slight so grave that he announced his retirement on Monday.

Jamie Sarkonak: Francophones right to be mad at Air Canada CEO Back to video

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Francophones are furious, and they have every right to be.

The English side of Canada largely hasn’t seen it that way for the last week, distracted by the larger conversation about the onerous, alienating state of official bilingualism. It’s a reasonable grievance. Once upon a time, that policy meant that the French speakers of Canada would be guaranteed federal services and an opportunity to participate in federal politics in their language.

The Trudeau years injected a much more radical approach: judges must now speak French to be named to the Supreme Court (a requirement that correlates with a steep decline in the quality of nominees) and English federal civil servants need it to advance into management. These new, arguably unconstitutional requirements have now thrown a shadow over the legitimacy of the Governor General, Mary Simon, who only speaks English and Inuktitut.

These language requirements function as career caps that bar most English-speaking Canadians from key elite roles central to running the country. The best time to learn a second language is as a child — when parents are making the major decisions. For English-speaking adults, there won’t be any learning French by osmosis unless one is willing to transplant their lives during what are usually peak career years. Then there are lessons, which are time-consuming, expensive, and yield poorly if not immersed. Meanwhile, real-time translation technology has become a reality thanks to recent developments in AI.

Despite being a private company Air Canada is a recurring sore point in the language debate because it’s subject to the Official Languages Act, as that was part of the privatization deal. It’s also a federally regulated company, which also comes with bilingual requirements. CEO Rousseau’s poor French has gotten him into hot water before, and the company is regularly peppered with language complaints, some more reasonable than others.

Alas, there is a time and a place to groan about bilingualism and debate the new heights to which the language hoops have been hoisted in the federal sector. It is not in the immediate aftermath of a crash, over the bodies of two pilots, aged 24 and 30, who had no choice but to commit to a landing that was certain to kill them. What a tragedy, that their lives were taken away by a cascade of other people’s errors.

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The necessity of a statement in the language of both pilots’ families — one English, one French — should have been obvious to anyone with an important leadership role to play.

Francophones understand this. On Feb. 11, one day after shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar killed eight innocent people in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., including five students at the local high school, Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet gave his condolences in English — a rarity for the party.

In English Blanchet told the House of Commons, “In the name of the Bloc Québécois and my own, I would like to offer my deepest condolences to the families of the nine children whose lives were taken, to the 25 families waiting and hoping for good news about their wounded children, and to the entire community of Tumbler Ridge.” He continued an extended statement in French, as he is not an exemplary English speaker. And that’s just fine: what mattered in that moment was the thought, and the effort.

Rousseau may not be a politician like Blanchet, but to reach the job of CEO he should have had some degree of political sense to read the room. And he certainly could have managed a small, heartfelt statement to the loved ones of employees who died working for him, especially since he was on record in 2022 committing to 10 hours of French lessons a week. This was first a violation of their dignity, second a violation of bilingualism.

At very least, Rousseau recovered his political senses enough to retreat from the controversy. The rest of English Canada should too; siding with a man who disrespected the dead is never a winning strategy.

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