Air Canada Boss Quit-Fired For Unpardonable Canadian Sin, Trois Guesses What It Is
Au revoir! (That's two hints now. Three if you count le hibou.)
In the end it was hubris that brought down Michael Rousseau, the president and CEO of Canada’s biggest airline, who announced his resignation last week after public outrage over his conduct.
He managed to deke around the pitchforks after tripling his take-home pay the year after the expiration of a hold on executive bonuses that was a condition for government pandemic loans. He didn’t step down over fury for jettisoning free carry-on luggage or forcing striking flight attendants back on the job through binding arbitration. There’s no reason to believe his name is in the Trump/Epstein Files along with fellow CEOs such as Leon Black (Apollo Global Management), Jes Staley (Barclay’s), Glenn Dubin (Highland Capital) or Stephen Schwarzman (Blackstone).
Non, Rousseau’s laissez-faire attitude toward learning French was finally a bridge too far for the head of a major Quebec-based company. Air Canada faced a PR nightmare after he put out a four-minute condolence video only in English (but with helpful subtitles!) following the fatal accident at LaGuardia airport when an Air Canada Jazz flight from Montreal hit a fire truck while landing, killing the two pilots and injuring dozens. At least he started with “bonjour” and isn’t responsible for trying to steal jazz as a corporate rebranding effort.
The guy is like if Icarus fell from the sky because his Greek sucked and he couldn’t understand the caveat about wings melting if he flew too close to the sun. It’s unforgivably gauche — a French word meaning “awkward” or “tactless” — to put in zero effort when being bilingual is a basic job requirement for everyone else at the company you run. Not unlike Uncle Walt being the only one at Disneyland allowed to sport facial hair. Full disclosure: I spent a year answering Air Canada’s telephones after university and had to meet the same in-house standards as everyone else:
Creating meaningful connections every day is our promise to our customers, our employees and our community. We proudly deliver on this promise by offering services in their language of choice where required across our network, as official languages are fundamental to our core values, and we are one of the few private-sector companies in Canada to do so. Whether it is in both official languages of Canada (English and French) or in 23 other route languages, we are steadfastly ensuring this 50-year-plus commitment.
Even the prime minister piled on. “I am so disappointed by Air Canada’s CEO’s video message; it lacks judgment and compassion,” Mark Carney told reporters en route to the office on Wednesday. “We proudly live in a bilingual country; there are two official languages, and Air Canada has a special responsibility to communicate at all times, in any situation, in both official languages.”
Big Daddy Carney isn’t mad, he’s just disappointed, which is worse. If the PM’s reaction seems over the top, keep in mind he was made to work on his own language skills as part of the frickin job. Carney’s been dutifully hitting the Bescherelle and taking lessons en français since last year’s election, although his unnamed tutor reportedly left Ottawa last fall for personal reasons. Which is around the same time his predecessor started sexing Katy Perry, so it’s fun to imagine Justin Trudeau helping teach the new guy the ropes with accent aigu versus accent grave for the little hat above the “e,” or how to roll his “r”s like a proper Laurentian elite.
But yes, people died and it seems gauche or embarrassingly Canadian for this Two Solitudes language drama when nobody is even sure how safe it is to keep landing at American airports in the Trump 2.0 era. As Marcie wrote in the crash’s aftermath:
Since the start of the administration there have been 184 aviation disasters in the US, killing a total of 387 people, starting with the January 2025 midair collision near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, the first commercial big-jet domestic fatal airline disaster since 2009. While at the same time, Trump and Secretary Whitey On The Moon have been gutting the agencies responsible for aviation safety, even given pre-existing shortages. Thousands of FAA employees, including air traffic controllers, safety inspectors, maintenance mechanics, flight-map updaters, and even the lawyers at the Aviation Litigation Division charged with making sure pilots meet requirements and don’t have DUIs (!) have all left after taking buyouts, getting laid off, or not having their contracts renewed.
Context is important because Québécois historically had to put up with English bosses who wouldn’t even allow the language in the workplace. There was a whole Quiet Revolution about it, but no guillotines were involved.
It’s human nature to want to cut Rousseau some slack as a numbers guy in his sixties who might not be up to the task of learning a new language, but that’s part of the problem. He promised since being hired five years ago to get right on it, and tolerance has reached a Christ, c’est assez moment with the rich and powerful not being held to the same standards as everyone else. He also doesn’t gain much sympathy as someone born to a francophone mother who grew up in Cornwall a couple of miles from the Quebec border and is now married to a woman whose mother tongue is also French. Not to mention he’s the former CFO of the now-defunct Hudson’s Bay Company — which was North America’s oldest corporation — built on the backs of French-Canadian coureurs de bois and once made the mistake of boasting to a crowd about living in Montreal for 14 years without speaking a word of French. It’s like he’s somehow proud to have never learned the local language.
Also his last name is frickin’ Rousseau! It’s possible he doesn’t even know the diminutive surname translates as “little redhead.”
The guy could learn a thing or two from Calgary zookeepers who are doing everything they can to accommodate a new polar bear imported from Quebec who only responds to commands in French. The hope is that Yelle can soon share an enclosure with Siku, whose buddy Baffin drowned a couple of years ago after some rough play, and they might hit it off.
Fortunately the first language polar bears speak is smell.
[CTV / The Varsity / AP / Blueskies!]
How quaint, people being sacked for not following the job responsibilities.
I kid, that's something that happens to regular people in the USA, just not the wealthy and powerful.
Supremes gave Steve bannon get out of jail free card. I hate these people.
The lawless dick tatership continues unchecked.