To non-Canadian eyes, Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau’s decision to post a message of condolences in English following the airline’s deadly crash at New York’s LaGuardia airport may not seem all that noteworthy. After all, Rousseau has acknowledged himself the limitations of his French. And this was an extremely emotionally fraught moment: In the first Air Canada accident to involve fatalities since 1983, the March 22 runway collision between a plane and a fire truck killed two pilots and injured dozens of others.
Amid such a tragedy, the ensuing outcry over the CEO’s language choice might look like a tempest in a teapot. But Canadians understood immediately why Rousseau’s decision to speak English (other than a “bonjour” and a “merci”) caused such an affront. It has now led to his retirement from the company later this year, as announced on Monday. (A spokesman for Air Canada said, “Mr. Rousseau has reached a natural retirement age” and added that the company’s succession planning had been underway internally for some time.)
Air Canada is headquartered in Montreal, a majority French-speaking city, the largest in Quebec. It’s a region where matters of language are often a third rail in public life. For many Québécois, French is not just a means of communication but a core marker of identity—which helps explain the intense emotional reactions when they feel it is sidelined in official settings.
Rousseau’s message was meant to offer condolences for the deaths and sympathy for the injured—and also to reassure the company’s rattled 37,000 employees and put the spotlight on the heroism of the pilots and crew. He expressed Air Canada’s “deepest sorrow for everyone affected,” and called it a “very dark day here at Air Canada.”
But those messages were overshadowed by the flap over his language. As a former Crown corporation (Canadian jargon for government-owned business) Air Canada is subject to the nation’s Official Languages Act, meaning it is required by law to communicate in both English and French. So it was baffling to many that Rousseau, a Canadian, would not realize that a 3-minute, 45-second video in English would be a big faux pas. Making matters worse: The flight originated in Montreal, so it certainly had many francophone passengers and crew members among the injured, in addition to one of the pilots who died.
Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada called it “disrespectful of the francophone community.” And even Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney weighed in, slamming Rousseau for his “lack of judgment and lack of compassion.” “We proudly live in a bilingual country, and companies like Air Canada particularly have a responsibility to always communicate in both official languages,” Carney told reporters.
Rousseau himself acknowledged the flub and said last week that he was “deeply saddened” that “his inability to speak French had diverted attention from the profound grief of the families and the great resilience of Air Canada’s employees.”
Why effort matters more than perfect pronunciation
Though speaking in heartfelt way can be hard for someone using a second language, many executives of multinational companies do nonetheless make the effort (even if their public relations staff typically crafts the message). Politicians too: New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has made videos in Spanish, Arabic, and Hindi—often including footage of him struggling with his lines—to the delight of immigrant voters who appreciate the effort, even if he’s butchering the pronunciation.
This wasn’t Rousseau’s first time creating a language kerfuffle as CEO of Air Canada. In 2021, soon after taking the reins, Rousseau proudly noted in a speech to the Montreal Chamber of Commerce that he had been easily able to live in the city for more than a decade without learning French. (He grew up in Eastern Ontario, a part of the country with a sizeable francophone minority.)
During the ensuing P.R. crisis, he apologized and pledged to learn French. Bloomberg reported that Rousseau had taken 300 hours of French lessons since 2021, so it’s anyone’s guess why he couldn’t have cobbled together at least a couple of sentences in the mother tongue of many of Air Canada’s stakeholders. (Some commentators suggested that for his compensation of $9.4 million last year, learning conversational French shouldn’t be too much to ask.) Before Air Canada, he spent years as a senior executive of the retailer Hudson’s Bay.
The Air Canada board—which should perhaps have nudged Rousseau along in his French studies—said on Monday that French skills would be a key factor in choosing the next CEO. (Though Rousseau has won credit for guiding Air Canada out of the pandemic, shares are down 33% since he became CEO.)
The language debates permeate many aspects of Quebec life: A few years ago, controversy erupted when the hallowed Montreal Canadiens hockey team hired an anglophone coach who was unilingual. He didn’t last long.
The business risk of offending your home market
Some of Rousseau’s defenders in the Canadian commentariat have raised fair questions about whether a CEO of a global business really needs to speak French, whether such a requirement narrows the talent pool too much, and whether any of this should even be the government’s business.
But ultimately, Rousseau’s inability—or perhaps even unwillingness—to learn French, was just bad business. Angering politicians or columnists is one thing. But 23% of Canadians are native French speakers. Given all the competition in the airline industry, and choices travelers have, offending anyone is dangerous.
Emotional intelligence, empathy, and the ability to read the room are essential skills for CEOs today. Others have learned that lesson the hard way years before Rousseau did: Remember when cloud computing company PagerDuty’s CEO Jennifer Tejada quoted Martin Luther King Jr. in a memo announcing mass layoffs in 2023 and had to apologize? Or howBP CEO Tony Hayward grumbled “I’d like my life back” after an oil spill caused by the company?
Perhaps Rousseau should get credit for not using AI to mask his lack of linguistic fluency. But authenticity, even if expressed in broken French, is the best approach when it comes to soothing nerves and expressing sympathy.
