We cats get very impatient with the Francophones in Quebec who keep fretting that French is under siege and they must language-police everything. But that said, the CEO of Air Canada is a jackass.
Michael Rousseau (yep, that's a French name) recorded a short video offering condolences after the fatal jet-versus-fire-truck accident at LaGuardia on Sunday night. Except for "bonjour" and "merci," it was English-only. Okay, that's extraordinarily bad.
Several reasons: 1) One of the pilots who died in the accident was a Quebecker from Coteau-du-Lac, outside of Montreal. 2) French is the official second language of Canada, and a quarter of Canadians speak it. 3) Rousseau promised back in 2022 that he was going to learn the language after a previous controversy in which he implied he was "too busy" to do it. Hey, dude, the Prime Minister of the entire country has found time to work on his French, so why can't you?
"I'm very disappointed — as others are, rightly so — in this unilingual message of the CEO of Air Canada," PM Mark Carney said. "It shows a lack of judgment, a lack of compassion."
Oui. If, after four years, Rousseau hasn't learned enough French to make a four-minute video — with a teleprompter, even! — after two of his pilots sacrificed themselves to save their passengers, he doesn't deserve to be in his job and make his (one presumes) enormous salary. Aside from everything else, it's PR 101. Nous, les chats, SIFFLONS.
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