Air Canada’s board of directors must do its homework to promote French within its senior management, say business stakeholders.
The remarks made Wednesday by the president and chief executive officer of Air Canada, Michael Rousseau, indicating that he did not have time to learn French raised an outcry. The CEO of the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal (CCMM), Michel Leblanc, does not hide his disappointment when asked about the speech of the big boss of Air Canada, Wednesday, at an event that ‘He has organized.
“In the last few days, we asked his team to include French in his speech,” he says. We received information that there would be statements in French at the beginning and at the end of the speech. Let’s say we expected there to be more [de français]. It was very minimalist. “
Mr. Rousseau should have made a commitment to learn French from the start, he said. “In our mind, the leaders of large companies in Quebec must have the sensitivity to understand the place of French here. He did not know how to demonstrate this sensitivity, “neither during his speech nor during the press briefing”. Since then, Mr. Rousseau has apologized by means of a press release and undertakes to learn French.
However, beyond the controversy, the problem lies less in hiring a unilingual Anglophone CEO than in learning French as a criteria when recruiting members of management.
“The pressure is on the board. He is the one who makes the selection of the CEO, ”according to Michel Leblanc. In the criteria leading to the hiring of officers, the directors have the power to impose French or the learning of the language of Molière as a condition. “It’s all part of an organizational culture. This culture would be “clearly deficient” with regard to French at Air Canada, he said.
“Hiring an English-speaking CEO does not necessarily mean that the organizational culture will switch to English, if the pressure is on this CEO who must learn French as quickly as possible,” said Michel for his part. The White.
A similar story from the CEO of the Institute on Governance, François Dauphin, who believes that there was a breach on the part of the board of directors of the air carrier.
“The use of French should be one of the important criteria for hiring, because we are talking about a company strongly supported by governments, subject to the Official Languages Act, whose head office is in a French-speaking city in a French-speaking province ”, believes François Dauphin.
“In the event that the person most competent to occupy the position is unilingual Anglophone, this latter should be sensitized and coached by the board of directors,” he says. Last year, Rania Llewellyn, who did not speak French, was also appointed to head the Laurentian Bank. “
“Unlike Mr. Rousseau, she was already enrolled in a French course at the time of her appointment,” he recalls, adding that the Air Canada executive’s apologies come “a bit late”.
Effects on employees and customers
It should also be noted that several former Air Canada executives, in the 1990s and 2020s, did not express themselves much better in French than Mr. Rousseau, unlike his predecessor, Calin Rovinescu. “We wonder if Mr. Rovinescu was not the exception rather than the rule,” remarks Mr. Dauphin.
According to the governance specialist, the message sent by company management can discourage employees from learning French, with the effect of harming services to Francophones, as evidenced by the many complaints filed each year against Air Canada. at the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages.
Among the criticisms of the words of the boss of Air Canada, some have gone so far as to ask for the resignation of Michael Rousseau. The secretary general of the Federation of Workers of Quebec (FTQ) wanted to “remind this gentleman that, of the thousands of women and men who make a career at Air Canada, a good part is French-speaking”.
He adds: “Mr. Rousseau is no longer the right person to occupy this position and, if the Air Canada board of directors has any honor, he must fire this individual. “
The debate which followed the declarations overshadowed the “substance of the speech” of Mr. Rousseau, laments Michel Leblanc, president of the CCMM: “It was an enlightening and reassuring speech on the capacities of Air Canada to face challenges in the coming years, including the hiring of employees and the purchase of the A220 (former Bombardier Cseries). And that’s what we should have been talking about. “
For their part, the members of the Board of Air Canada contacted by The duty did not respond to our interview requests.