Michael Rousseau, who became CEO of Air Canada in 2021, will retire by the end of September.Mike Blake/Reuters
Last week, Air Canada AC-T boss Michael Rousseau scored what soccer fans would call an own goal – putting the ball in his own net. Also known in one of the airline’s two official languages as un but contre son camp.
By failing to learn French despite years of promising to do so, the Montreal-based chief executive officer let down his company, his customers and his people at a time when they needed him most.
After a horrific crash at LaGuardia Airport that killed two pilots, one a francophone, Air Canada’s leader proved unable to meet the moment by expressing grief and empathy in the language spoken by many of his colleagues and passengers.
Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau to step down
Air Canada employees and investors deserve better than Mr. Rousseau’s cultural insensitivity and years of poor stock market performance versus peers.
The airline’s board is belatedly waking up to the fact that the CEO and directors are accountable when they say in the proxy statement for the 2026 annual meeting: “Air Canada is proud to be one of the few Canadian private sector companies to offer services in both official languages across Canada.”
That proxy, published this month, says: “We regularly test the linguistic skills of our more than 15,000 public facing employees in respect of Canada’s official languages.”
How did Mr. Rousseau score on that test?
Mr. Rousseau gives a speech at the Montreal Chamber of Commerce on Nov. 3, 2021.Mario Beauregard/The Canadian Press
As anyone who has spent time in Quebec knows, anglophones aren’t expected to speak perfect French when doing business in la belle province. They are expected to at least try to use the language.
When a company says a specific skill is essential to an employee doing their job – expertise that matters to a significant number of customers – and the employee promises to learn that skill, then never does, that failure has consequences.
Mr. Rousseau’s five-year run as CEO will end in September in part because he couldn’t even read a few words in French off a prompter for a corporate video done in the wake of the LaGuardia accident. That speaks to the sort of arrogance that fuelled Quebec’s Quiet Revolution and decades of separatist support.
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Air Canada is also looking for a new CEO to improve results at an airline whose share price has trailed six of its seven publicly traded peers over the past five years. The only airline stock to do worse is Air France-KLM Group.
The high flier in the sector when it comes to stock performance is British Airways parent International Airlines Group, led by Spanish-born CEO Luis Gallego. He speaks fluent English.
Mr. Rousseau took the controls at Air Canada in 2021, after 14 years as chief financial officer. Since he became the CEO, the airline has provided shareholders with a total return of negative 15.3 per cent. The median five-year performance of global peers is a 48.3-per-cent positive return.
For these results, Air Canada paid Mr. Rousseau $13.1-million last year, up from $12.4-million in 2024.
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Air Canada’s board was well down the road on CEO succession prior to the LaGuardia crash, as Mr. Rousseau is 68 years old. They are putting both internal and external candidates through the paces. The proxy statement states, this time around, the criteria for the position includes “the ability to communicate in French.”
French is far from the only tool needed in the next CEO’s toolkit.
“Air Canada’s next leader must combine operational rigour with a clear strategic vision to navigate persistent industry headwinds including fuel price volatility, labour cost pressures, and competitive intensity,” RBC Capital analyst James McGarragle said in a report on Monday.
To be fair, RBC’s analyst gave Mr. Rousseau’s leadership a positive review, complimenting his “strong execution capability” in the face of challenges that included the COVID-19 pandemic, pension restructuring and Aeroplan acquisition.
Running Air Canada, a domestic oligopoly protected from takeovers, is one of the best jobs in aviation. It will attract top performers from around the globe, as rival WestJet Airlines did in 2022 when it plucked CEO Alexis von Hoensbroech from the top job at Austrian airlines.
Candidates to be the next CEO at Air Canada need to show what Prime Minister Mark Carney pointed out Mr. Rousseau so clearly lacked in the wake of last week’s crash, “judgment and compassion.”