The number of complaints about the speech in English by the boss of Air Canada is on the way to breaking records. The Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages had received more than a thousand on Friday afternoon. At the same time, a job offer for unilingual flight attendants was modified.
Jazz Aviation, Air Canada’s regional partner, stopped requiring proficiency in both official languages in a job offer recently posted on its website. “Although bilingualism (English and French) is preferable, it is no longer necessary to speak French,” it read. However, applicants had to “speak fluent English”.
“The wording of the job posting in question was immediately corrected when brought to our attention,” told Press Jazz Aviation spokesperson Manon Stuart. “This does not in any way reflect company policy. While it is true that recruiting bilingual candidates is a challenge, priority is always given to bilingual flight attendants. ”
IMAGE THE PRESS
The job offer seen Thursday did not require fluency in French for flight attendants called to work for Jazz Aviation, a regional partner of Air Canada. It has since been corrected.
On average, Air Canada is the subject of 85 complaints per year concerning the provision of services in French, but the Office of the Commissioner has rarely received so many for a single case. The record belongs to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, which had been the subject of 1,784 complaints in 1986 for sending a document in English only to its offices in Quebec, according to the records of the Commissioner’s office.
Warned three times
The president and CEO of Air Canada had however been warned more than once against the danger of triggering a language storm by delivering a speech almost exclusively in English to the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal on Wednesday. Press was able to confirm on Friday the information first published by Radio-Canada.
The Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages had also contacted the office of the CEO of Air Canada to ask him to make changes to his speech, without success, we told Press. The duty reported Friday that the Commissioner of Official Languages, Raymond Théberge, had anticipated “some controversy”.
“Unacceptable,” says Trudeau
PHOTO ADRIAN WYLD, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Justin trudeau
In Ottawa, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke for the first time about the controversy on Friday.
“I find that this is an unacceptable situation and I am happy that the Minister of Official Languages is following up,” replied Mr. Trudeau to a question from Radio-Canada, when he was leaving a downtown Ottawa building.
He then turned on his heels without answering a question about the resignation requests of the CEO.
The Bloc Québécois and the New Democratic Party demanded Thursday the resignation of Michael Rousseau, in office for less than a year. Québec solidaire and the Liberal Party of Quebec did the same in the National Assembly.
$ 5.4 million in compensation
The big boss of Air Canada would not leave empty-handed if the board of directors decided to show him the door.
The value of his severance pay would be at a minimum of 5.4 million, according to the most recent terms of his employment contract. In the event of a “dismissal without serious cause,” the businessman would be entitled to a cash payment of $ 2.8 million, while the value of his other benefits, including his stock options, is estimated at 2.56 million.
Chairman and CEO of the Institute on the Governance of Private and Public Organizations, François Dauphin has difficulty seeing how Mr. Rousseau, a big boss for less than a year, could be deprived of his severance pay if he were to lose his post because of the linguistic storm it unleashed.
“French was probably not part of a criterion for hiring,” he believes. It is difficult to consider this as a serious reason a priori. Where that poses a problem is that he is in a way the guardian of culture at Air Canada. ”
Mr. Dauphin believes that the big boss of Air Canada was “highly clumsy”, but that the fault also lies with the board of directors because of its “lack of supervision” on the language issue.
Quebec writes to Ottawa
The Minister responsible for Canadian Relations, Sonia LeBel, wrote this week to Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor to reiterate Quebec’s position on the modernization of the Official Languages Act, which “must better supervise and in particular monitor Air Canada so that the company complies with its obligations,” said the firm of Mr.me LeBel.
“We saw the federal minister [des Langues officielles] denounce the words of the CEO of Air Canada. Now, the federal government must take action. It is a priority that all businesses, even those under federal jurisdiction, comply with all the requirements of the Charter of the French language, ”we added.
The reform of Official Languages Act must give more powers to the commissioner to enforce his recommendations. Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor reiterated on Thursday the government’s commitment to move forward, without specifying a deadline. The federal bill was tabled in June, two months before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called an election.