PHOTO DOMINICK GRAVEL, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
“Media controversy and appeals from politicians prompted CN to announce on Tuesday that it will find a French-speaking director. But we will not be able to resolve each aberration with loud cries either, ”writes Philippe Mercure.
We see that in the factories. Employees who subject products to the worst tests imaginable. The objective is to test their solidity, to determine their flaws and to improve the processes.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
It is to believe that the leaders of Air Canada and Canadian National have given themselves the mission of doing the same thing with our Official Languages Act.
The CEO of an airline already a champion of language complaints who gives a speech in English in Montreal despite warnings… and then arrogantly defends himself against it?
A railway undertaking subject to the Official Languages Act and installed rue De La Gauchetière, in Montreal, unable to find a single member who speaks French to sit on its board of directors?
Well imagined. The law, it is true, had not provided for such flagrant affronts.
But that’s good: the federal government is in the process of reviewing its Official Languages Act. And these offenses provide an opportunity to close the gaps.
Media controversy and appeals from politicians prompted CN to announce on Tuesday that it will find a French-speaking director. But neither will we be able to regulate each aberration by loud cries.
If good judgment does not impose itself, it must be imposed by law.
The specialists are clear: CN is not violating current law by having a unilingual Anglophone board of directors. And this, even if this former state-owned company is one of the few companies to which the Official Languages Act applies in full, as if it were still a federal institution.
The law clearly specifies that “senior management must be able to function in these two languages”. But a board, you see, is not management.
This is a flaw. A flaw that Bill C-13 on the modernization of the Official Languages Actcurrently before Parliament.
CN shows the need to improve it.
The chairman of the Standing Committee on Official Languages, Liberal MP René Arseneault, believes that Ottawa should impose a minimum proportion of French-speaking administrators on businesses subject to the Official Languages Act like Air Canada and CN.
Another idea would be to use the wording that already applies to senior management and require that these boards of directors be able to operate in both languages. An obligation that does not affect each individual, but the group as a whole.
We will say that it is symbolic. That the administrators, anyway, will discuss in English among themselves.
But the role of a director is not limited to holding a few meetings a year with the other members of the Board. The College of Company Directors defines it as that of “watching over the interests of the company and its shareholders while being concerned impacts of their decisions on stakeholders”, including employees and “the community in which the company operates”.
Considering this, it is perfectly legitimate to demand that the CAs of former Crown corporations such as CN, Air Canada and NAV Canada be able to maintain relations in French with the community or the employees of the companies they represent. Or simply to understand their concerns.
The power of symbols should not be underestimated either. The shocking casualness with which Air Canada and CN manage their linguistic obligations percolates from the top of the pyramid to the entire organization.
This is how Air Canada has been awash in complaints for decades without it changing.
This is also how CN employees in the east of the country say they are subject to threats and disciplinary sanctions if they use French at work, as our colleague Julien Arsenault recently revealed.
That we are still there in 2022 is unacceptable.
The current version of Bill C-13 already adds teeth to the Official Languages Act. The CN shows us that we have to tighten the screw one more turn.