Tension mounts as many calls for Air Canada CEO’s resignation

Quebec Premier Francois Legault has been joined by politicians across the aisle, calling for the resignation of Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau. Rousseau has garnered criticism from Quebec and French-speaking Canada after his unilingual comments about the crash at Laguardia Airport. Rousseau released a four-minute video as a press release about the tragic incident, in which he only spoke English.  

Air Canada is a bilingual company, and one of the pilots killed in the accident was French-speaking from Quebec.

After the video, Quebec Premier Francois Legault and a series of other politicians across Quebec and Canada called for his resignation, stating his unilingual speech was disrespectful to francophones, and the French pilot killed in the crash.

LaGuardia plane crash

On March 22, an Air Canada plane coming from Montreal collided with a fire truck on the runway at LaGuardia Airport in New York. At the time of the accident, there was an emergency on another runway, and the air traffic controller mistakenly gave the emergency vehicle permission to cross the runway where Air Canada Express Flight 8646 had just landed. ATC attempted to rescind its permission, but the fire truck did not stop. Flight 8646, a CRJ-900 ⁠operated by Jazz Aviation, struck the firetruck, killing both pilots and sending more than 40 people to the hospital. The plane was carrying 76 souls from Montreal to New York, with four crew members and 72 passengers on board.

On March 24, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released a recording from the air traffic controller who gave the firetruck permission to cross Flight 8646's runway. The controller can be heard giving permission, then nearly immediately rescinding it. The firetruck only had permission for three seconds before ATC said ‘stop' 11 separate times before the crash. The recording ends with the air traffic controller saying ‘I messed up'.

There were two controllers in the tower that night, a local controller and the controller in charge. Airplanes do not have direct radio contact with emergency vehicles. ATC is the only link that pilots have to emergency vehicles on the ground.

Rousseau's statement

Before Rousseau's unilingual speech, Air Canada was not the source of any controversy. The flight was being operated by a Canadian company, Jazz Aviation, and if any fault is to be laid, it would have been with LaGuardia Airport's ATC, not Air Canada. Now, the story has shifted away from a tragic loss of life to a CEO's poor press release. During the four-minute video, Michael Rousseau explains the details of the crash and lists the phone number of a helpline created to help family members locate victims of the accident. Rousseau said only two French words in the video, ‘bonjour' and ‘merci.' After the video, the Commissioner of Official Languages confirmed it had received 795 complaints by 1 P.M. on March 25 regarding the language of the statement. With the plane hailing from Montreal, a large portion of the affected Canadians are French-speaking, meaning Rousseau's message was directed at French Canada and done in English.

In a statement on March 26, Rousseau apologized for his English speech. He apologized that his English had diverted attention away from the victims of the accident, and towards his failings as a public figure.

Rousseau claimed that even after ‘years' of lessons, he is still unable to express himself in French. According to the CEO, he will continue his ‘efforts to improve'.

In 2021, Rousseau bungled his first speech as Air Canada CEO. In a 26-minute speech at the Palais des congrès in Montreal, Rousseau only spoke French for about 20 seconds, and struggled to answer questions in French, asking French journalists to translate them. During the speech, Rousseau claimed that his busy work schedule has prevented him from learning French, and the fact that he has lived in Montreal for 14 years without managing to grasp the language is actually a compliment to the city's diversity. Politicians and Canadians have appropriately pointed out that Air Canada is subject to the Official Languages Act and must therefore serve customers in English and French, depending on the customer's preference. Air Canada was a crown corporation until it was fully privatized in 1989.

Politicians react

Quebec Premier Francois Legault called the statement disrespectful and cited Rousseau's failure in 2021 as the reason. Rousseau claimed that he had begun taking privately tutored French lessons after the controversy in 2021, but clearly, the lessons have not been happening. Montreal's Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada said Rousseau ‘failed at his task' and had now lost the respect of francophones. Quebec Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette called it unacceptable and cited Rousseau's past transgressions as well. Rousseau has been summoned to Ottawa to explain why he spoke only in English in his video. He was also summoned in 2022. Rousseau will have to argue to the government of Canada that 14 years is not enough time to learn French in a province that asks immigrants to learn the language in six months.