Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau gives a speech at the Montreal Chamber of Commerce, Nov. 3, 2021.Mario Beauregard/The Canadian Press
There’s a French dictum: Il faut tourner sept fois sa langue dans sa bouche avant de parler.
It means think before you speak.
Air Canada’s outgoing CEO, Michael Rousseau, could have benefited from that wisdom before he offered his condolences in a by-and-large English video message (save for “bonjour” and “merci”) after a collision at New York’s LaGuardia Airport killed two Canadian pilots, including a francophone.
Ditto for the airline’s corporate directors, who have spent years offering Canadians double-speak about the importance of French, this country’s other official language.
Mr. Rousseau isn’t solely to blame for his latest French faux pas. Indeed, this foul-up points to failures of corporate governance at the flag carrier.
The issue isn’t whether the top executive at Air Canada should speak French. Of course, that should be a basic job requirement to lead a Montreal-based company. A CEO cannot lead if he (or she) is incapable of communicating with staff and customers.
Rather, the buck stops with the board of directors for appointing Mr. Rousseau to the CEO role in the first place, given his language limitations. They compounded this error by failing to ensure he became fluent despite statements conveying that this was a priority.
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In 2021, for instance, Vagn Soerensen, chair of the board, assured the federal government that Mr. Rousseau was committed to learning French and that it would be “an integral part” of his performance evaluation.
Mr. Soerensen made that pledge after Mr. Rousseau caused a separate furor by musing about his inability to speak French after living in Montreal for what was then 14 years.
“I’ve been able to live in Montreal without speaking French. And I think that’s a testament to the city of Montreal,” Mr. Rousseau said at the time.
He made the comments after delivering a speech at the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal that was — you guessed it — entirely in English aside from a few words of French. Unsurprisingly, his flip remarks sparked a backlash in Quebec.
Mr. Soerensen and other directors are now experiencing the discomfort of déjà vu. They owe investors, and Canadians more broadly, answers about this latest blunder because ultimately, they’re the ones who dropped the ball.
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The board’s risk committee, in particular, should have known there was potential for another embarrassing language gaffe. That assumes, of course, the board was actually supervising Mr. Rousseau’s progress in learning French over the past five years.
An airline must have a robust crisis communications plan in the event of a crash. So, who on the board signed off on Mr. Rousseau’s English video with French subtitles?
Air Canada sure left the impression that he was picking up the language. “Mr. Rousseau has continued to act on his personal pledge to learn French,” states its 2025 proxy circular.
This year’s filing, however, featured a change of tune: “Mr. Rousseau has acknowledged that despite his efforts he is unable to express himself adequately in French.”
Although this suggests that his linguistic failing may have negatively affected his performance review, the document doesn’t expressly state that.
Instead, Air Canada’s 2026 proxy circular helps Mr. Rousseau save face. “Nevertheless, under his leadership, progress has been made and continued on official language priorities including in corporate language training and with the approval of the Programme de francisation by the Office québécois de la langue française.”
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So, was learning French part of Mr. Rousseau’s official duties or not? The company’s disclosures make it impossible to tell whether he lost a single dollar of compensation for failing to gain a basic grasp of the language.
What’s more, the company states that he “exceeded” overall objectives with respect to corporate sustainability initiatives, which include leadership, corporate culture and enhancing its “languages policy and training.”
If the board really cared about Mr. Rousseau mastering French, they would have expressly tied language proficiency to his incentive pay.
Tone starts at the top. Although most of its 13 director nominees, who will be standing for election, have “varying levels of proficiency in French,” only three of them are fluent.
Now that Mr. Rousseau is retiring by the end of the third quarter, the board is dealing with a more fraught CEO transition, even though a global search began in January.
Mr. Rousseau is 68. Arguably, a succession plan should have already been in place.
Air Canada’s annual meeting is being held on May 1 in Vancouver. It’s far away from Montreal. But you can bet that its board of directors will have a lot of explaining to do.