Federal Transport Minister Omar Alghabra maintains that the Canadian National (CN) railway company should “lead by example” by appointing French-speaking Quebecers to its board of directors, even if his government has not no intention of regulating such appointments.
“CN has agreed to resolve the situation. They have already started looking for a board member who is French-speaking and based in Quebec. There must be real equality between French and English,” said Minister Alghabra, reading with some difficulty the long part in French of his presentation to the Standing Committee on Official Languages on Monday in Ottawa.
The Anglophone Minister’s effort nevertheless earned him congratulations from various members of the committee, including Bloc Québécois MP Mario Beaulieu. “Your French has improved a lot. Your teacher is better than the one [du p.-d.g. d’Air Canada] Mr. Rousseau,” he joked.
It was revealed in April that the Canadian National (CN) railway company, although based in Montreal, had not retained any French-speaking candidate for its board of directors. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had described this situation as “unacceptable”, especially after the scandal caused by the assumed unilingualism of the big boss of Air Canada, Michael Rousseau.
CN was privatized in 1995, on the condition that the company still be subject to the Official Languages Act. Air Canada went through this same process in 1988. However, Transport Canada does not have the authority to apply the Official Languages Act to these private companies, the minister specified. This is the task of the Commissioner of Official Languages, to whom the Trudeau government wants to confer more sanctioning powers in its reform of the Official Languages Act, tabled in March under the name C-13.
Boards in the blind spot
Conservative MP Joël Godin pointed out to the Minister that the Liberal bill remains silent on the linguistic composition of boards of directors, such as that of CN. “What interests us are the results,” replied the minister. That consumers can have service in the language of their choice, and that the rights of employees are protected. »
Elected officials have argued that shortcomings in French by superiors at CN could put the safety of employees at risk, in the event of misunderstandings, for example. The minister said he agrees.
Omar Alghabra added that CN “must lead by example” by appointing “someone from Quebec to its board of directors”. He also drew the parallel between his own path to arriving in Canada and his need to also set an example by learning French once at the cabinet table.
“I was born and raised outside of Canada. I didn’t have the opportunity to learn French growing up. But as an immigrant, I like the way French is part of our Canadian identity. »
Mr. Alghabra says he contacted the railway company about the absence of Francophones at its head. The company would have promised to correct this situation during the next round of nominations. Representatives of CN will also be questioned on this subject by this same parliamentary committee on June 1st.
Last year, Canadian National said it did not recognize any right to work in French for its employees who work in teams or those who communicate with colleagues from unilingual English-speaking regions. The railway company had felt the need to file a brief to this effect in a case to which it was not a party before the Federal Court. Federal judge Marianne Rivoalen then completely ignored the company’s arguments in her ruling, which instead concluded that a federal employee in Montreal had his rights violated if he was forced to communicate every day with English-speaking colleagues based in Toronto.
Debate over language laws
Parliamentarians in the House of Commons began debating the Bloc Québécois’ latest bill on Monday, which aims to make federal companies operating in Quebec subject to the Charter of the French language. It takes up most of a text that died on the soap opera when the last election campaign started.
The MP for Salaberry — Suroît, Claude DeBellefeuille, who is sponsoring Bill C-238, believes that the reform of the Official Languages Act reintroduced in March by the Trudeau government does not go far enough. C-13, for example, offers companies under federal jurisdiction the choice between complying with federal law or with Quebec’s Charter of the French language.
The Liberal MP for Sherbrooke, Élisabeth Brière, argued that French will be sufficiently protected in Quebec thanks to the Liberal reform. “That’s what we deliver in C-13. We ensure that Canadians have the right to work and be served in French in private companies under federal regulation established in Quebec and in other regions with a strong French-speaking presence in the country. »
The Conservatives and New Democrats expressed sympathy for the Bloc’s bill. “We won’t argue about it,” assured Conservative MP Joël Godin. It is clear to me that federal enterprises operating in Quebec should not aim for the lowest common denominator. We don’t want any other Air Canada, CN, and so on. »
The deputy of the New Democratic Party (NDP), Alexandre Boulerice, also made the link with the recent scandals affecting these large companies in the transport sector based in Montreal. “We must deplore the situations that we see, on the part of Air Canada or Canadian National. »
The Bloc bill also includes a paragraph that aims to require “sufficient knowledge” of French for candidates for Canadian citizenship who reside in Quebec. This idea has already been proposed in 2020, and defeated by elected officials from the Liberal Party and the NDP.