\n<\/p>\n
The head of Canada\u2019s largest airline is stepping down after his video tribute to pilots killed in a fatal collision became a public relations nightmare for Air Canada, prompting a wave of mockery and indignation at him from both the public and politicians for not speaking French.<\/p>\n
Air Canada\u2019s CEO, Michael Rousseau, will retire by the end of the third quarter of 2026, the company said on Monday. He will continue to lead the company and serve on the board of directors until that time, the carrier said.<\/p>\n
Last week, an Air Canada Jazz flight landed at LaGuardia airport in New York and then collided with a fire truck on the runway, killing its two pilots, Antoine Forest and Mackenzie Gunther. The pair were praised by aviation experts for taking actions that saved passengers\u2019 lives.<\/p>\n
In response to the tragedy, the company posted a four-minute condolence video in which Rousseau spoke only two French words \u2013 bonjour<\/em> and merci<\/em>.<\/p>\n Canada\u2019s largest airline is headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, where French is both widely spoken and the official language. Forest, the 30-year-old pilot, was francophone, as were a number of passengers onboard the flight.<\/p>\n Under Canada\u2019s Official Languages Act, which enshrines French as one of the country\u2019s two official languages, the airline is required to provide services in both English and French. Even the company\u2019s own policy requires all communications with the public to be in both languages.<\/p>\n Soon after, the prime minister, Mark Carney, said he was \u201cextremely disappointed\u201d by Rousseau\u2019s unilingual message, which showed a \u201clack of compassion\u201d towards the victims of the crash.<\/p>\n Days later, Rousseau issued a statement apologizing for the way in which his \u201cinability to speak French\u201d had \u201cdiverted attention from the profound grief of the families\u201d and instead placed a sharp focus on his language skills.<\/p>\n \u201cDespite many lessons over several years, unfortunately, I am still unable to express myself adequately in French,\u201d he said. \u201cI sincerely apologize for this, but I am continuing my efforts to improve.\u201d<\/p>\n Both his wife and mother speak French, and in 2021 Rousseau came under fire for giving a high-profile speech in Quebec only in English. He responded to reporters at the time that he had been living in Montreal for 14 years and called it a \u201ctestament to the city\u201d that he didn\u2019t need to learn French. He also said at the time that his schedule did not allow him time to take French courses, but promised to do so, and had reportedly spent 300 hours studying the language before his video statement last week where he used only two words of it.<\/p>\n By 27 March, the office of the commissioner of official languages said it had received more than 2,000 complaints. In Quebec, where politicians have taken legislative steps to protect a language they fear is under threat by anglophones, lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a motion calling for Rousseau to step down.<\/p>\n The executive\u2019s inability to string together even a handful of rehearsed sentences in French also prompted disbelief online.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Air Canada CEO has lived in Montr\u00e9al for decades, and he knows less French than a literal POLAR BEAR,\u201d posted one user, referring to a bear that was recently moved from a zoo in Quebec to a facility in Calgary, where staff said a French-speaking trainer had accompanied the bear to help it adjust to his new settings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The head of Canada\u2019s largest airline is stepping down after his video tribute to pilots killed in a fatal collision became a public relations nightmare for Air Canada, prompting a wave of mockery and indignation at him from both the public and politicians for not speaking French. Air Canada\u2019s CEO, Michael Rousseau, will retire by<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47662,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[361,1723,318,3277,1872,632,150,12411,8142,5301,94,550],"class_list":{"0":"post-47661","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-air","9":"tag-backlash","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-ceo","12":"tag-crash","13":"tag-killed","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-pilots","16":"tag-resign","17":"tag-tribute","18":"tag-video","19":"tag-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}