A resident of Quebec is outraged at not having been able to be served in French on an Air Canada flight departing from Jean-Lesage international airport and heading for Florida.
• Read also: Air Canada will comply with Bill 96
• Read also: Air Canada: unilingual Anglophones feel penalized by “too much bilingualism”
Jean-Pierre Beaudoin, a businessman, boarded flight AC1688 on March 21, along with his wife. They had reserved seats in Business Class.
“I sit down and the senior flight attendant comes to see me. She speaks to me in English. I tell him: “I speak French”. She replies that she does not speak French. I repeat to him that I want to be served in French,” said Mr. Beaudoin.
After a few exchanges, the unilingual officer goes to find a Francophone colleague to explain the situation in French to Mr. Beaudoin, who has already understood very well because he is bilingual.
- Listen to the interview with Maxime Laporte, President of the Mouvement Québec Français on Richard Martineau’s show via QUB-radio :
In English or nothing
Faced with the insistence of the traveler, the two women leave to discuss together and return a few seconds later.
“The officer said to me in English: ‘Sir, this is my section. You have the right to leave the plane or I will serve you.” The other translates that for me. I repeated that I wanted to be served in French. I said: “Do you speak French, do you? I don’t want to be served in English,” said Mr. Beaudoin.
Photo Diane Tremblay
Jean-Pierre Beaudoin, a businessman from Quebec, will long remember his last trip to Florida on the wings of Air Canada. He can’t stomach the fact that service in English was imposed on him from Quebec.
According to him, a man entered the plane shortly afterwards to tell him that he was going to be served by this English-speaking employee, otherwise he had to leave the plane. Mr. Beaudoin cannot say whether it was an Air Canada employee or an airport security guard.
“I was boiling too much inside. I said to myself “We are in Quebec. The flight originates from Quebec.” It was sure that it was not a choice for me to leave the plane. The unilingual employee added: “You will take the next plane with a French-speaking flight attendant,” he said.
A matter of principle
He decided to stay on the plane. All service was in English during the flight, while he answered in French.
“For me, it’s a matter of principle,” said Mr. Beaudoin, who still can’t believe the treatment he received.
He would have appreciated that the other passengers who witnessed the scene supported him in his insistence on having service in French, but no one spoke, he reported.
Mr. Beaudoin maintains that he filed a complaint with the Office québécois de la langue française in the hours following the theft.
He did not do so with Air Canada, claiming that he did not trust their complaint handling process.
“I don’t expect anything. I just want people to know that. I’m trying to tell the world, “Wake up a bit”. It’s totally unacceptable things like that. It doesn’t happen,” he said.
According to Air Canada, two of the three flight attendants assigned to this flight were able to speak and understand French.
“So service in both official languages was available and offered. In this regard, it is wrong to claim that the only solution was to ask him to leave the aircraft since the French-speaking staff members were able and available to serve Mr. Beaudoin in French, ”reacted the airline.
Mr. Beaudoin, for his part, maintains that at no time did the French-speaking flight attendant offer to serve him in French, even if the traveler was not assigned to his section.
The Office québécois de la langue française has not yet responded to our requests.
COMPLAINTS FOR BREACHES ON FRENCH
- Air Canada is subject to the Official Languages Act, which has required maintenance of the carrier’s language obligations since its privatization in 1988.
- Every year, complaints are filed against the carrier for its failures to provide services in French to its customers.
- The Federal Court of Canada has already granted remedies by ordering Air Canada to pay damages to citizens whose rights had been violated.
- In 2017, Air Canada confirmed “to be able” to assign bilingual staff on all directly operated flights.
- The collective agreement provides for a minimum number of bilingual employees on all flights, depending on the type of aircraft.
SOURCE: AIRCANADA
AN ON-GOING PROBLEM AT AIR CANADA
November 3, 2021
Newly appointed CEO of Air Canada, Michael Rousseau delivers a speech almost exclusively in English at the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal, arousing the ire of many observers.
In a press scrum following his speech, Mr. Rousseau said he had “always been able to live in Montreal without speaking French” since his arrival in 2007.
February 28, 2022
The Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages of Canada claims to have received more than 2,680 complaints related to Mr. Rousseau’s speech.
This is the highest number of complaints received for a single event in the organization’s history.
March 21, 2022
Claiming to follow intensive French courses every day, the boss of Air Canada jabbers an apology in very approximate French before the Standing Committee on Official Languages.
He says he wants to advance French within Air Canada.
March 23, 2022
The elected officials of Quebec voted unanimously to subject companies under federal jurisdiction to Bill 101.
April 8, 2022
In a 17-page report, the Commissioner of Official Languages, Raymond Théberge, declares after investigation that the complaints are founded and that Air Canada did not respect the law during Mr. Rousseau’s speech.
— Jérémy Bernier, Le Journal de Quebec