Good morning. The chief executive of the country’s largest airliner is facing heavy criticism after posting an English-only message of condolences after this week’s fatal collision between an Air Canada plane and a firetruck at a New York airport.
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Rousseau giving a speech – famously, in English – at the Montreal Chamber of Commerce in 2021.Mario Beauregard/The Canadian Press
In focus
Air Canada’s CEO faces a familiar encore
Plus ça change.
Four years after drawing headlines for his admission that he had not learned French, despite living in Montreal for more than a decade, despite being the chief executive officer of a Montreal-based airliner, despite the company’s status as a federally regulated company operating under sweeping French-language rules, Air Canada chief executive Michael Rousseau is drawing attention for his English-only message of condolence after a fatal collision between a plane and a firetruck at New York’s LaGuardia Airport.
In a four-minute video posted about 13 hours after the crash, Rousseau said he wanted to express, “first, and most importantly, our deepest sorrow for everyone affected.
“Our efforts are focused on the needs of our passengers and crew members, along with their families and loved ones.”
Antoine Forest, the pilot in command of the Air Canada Express flight when it collided with a fire truck, was a francophone from Coteau-du-Lac, Que.
It’s perhaps no wonder, given his family’s background and the significance of language to the province’s identity, that media and political leaders across Quebec – then across Parliament Hill in Ottawa – were so quick with their criticisms.
The public nature of the response from Prime Minister Mark Carney, who said yesterday that he was “disappointed by the video message” and that it “lacks judgment and compassion,” might seem blunt to some, but it’s an instinct built on years of fraught relations between Ottawa and the province.
In the decades after the 1995 referendum, in which Quebeckers voted by the slimmest of margins against sovereignty, the federal government has made efforts to recognize the province as a distinct society, but through symbolic gestures that don’t allow for the reopening of the Constitution.
That symbolic recognition clearly has its limits, and has been met more recently by an increasingly assertive self‑definition by Quebec.
Regardless of Ottawa’s history with the province, those in leadership positions have long acknowledged that knowing at least a little of the country’s two official languages helps. And another simple truth: teleprompters exist. In January, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith delivered a small section of her speech to a Conservative Party convention in French, earning applause from the audience when it was clear her attempt had mercifully come to an end. In his time running in federal election campaigns, Reform Party founder Preston Manning gave French his level best – even if one comedian joked that they “preferred it in the original German.”
Instead, with the exception of a “bonjour” and a “merci,” the decision was made to record the video entirely in English, because Rousseau’s “ability to express himself in French does not allow him to convey such a sensitive message in that language as he would wish,” an Air Canada spokesperson told The Globe, noting the video had subtitles.
My time in public relations was relatively short-lived – and it’s always easier to solve problems in retrospect – but across my four-odd years, I might have recommended, so many hours after the crash, so many years after a promise to learn the language, knowing a francophone community had just lost a loved one, a more considered focus on the pilots and their families.
I might have suggested he express at least some of his sympathies in French. But it’s hard to explain why that would need suggesting in the first place.
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Morning update
Global markets slid amid dimming hopes for a quick end to the Middle East conflict as the U.S. and Iran issued conflicting statements about ceasefire talks.
Wall Street futures were in the red after major North American markets closed higher yesterday. TSX futures followed sentiment lower.
Overseas, the pan-European STOXX 600 was down 1.22 per cent in morning trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 declined 1 per cent, Germany’s DAX dropped 1.5 per cent and France’s CAC 40 fell 0.96 per cent.
In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei closed 0.27 per cent lower, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 1.89 per cent.
The Canadian dollar traded at 72.31 U.S. cents.