Michael Rousseau is on his way out as head of Air Canada, after a crisis response that somehow made a bad situation worse – and then kept digging.
The backdrop: a fatal March 22 crash at LaGuardia Airport involving a flight from Montreal to New York City. Two pilots were killed.
Rousseau responded with a video offering his “deepest sorrow for everyone affected,” but delivered almost all of it in English, tossing in a token “bonjour” and “merci” like that would smooth things over, according to Bloomberg.
It did not.
In Quebec—where language politics are less “preference” and more “contact sport”—the backlash was immediate.
The National Assembly of Quebec unanimously called for him to go, and Prime Minister Mark Carney slammed the video as a “lack of judgment and lack of compassion.” Notably, one of the deceased pilots was from Quebec, which made the whole thing land even worse.
Rousseau tried damage control, noting he’d taken hundreds of hours of French lessons and saying his shortcomings had “diverted attention from the profound grief.”
Unfortunately, after years in Montreal and all that studying, he still couldn’t get through a serious statement without subtitles—at which point the problem kind of explains itself.
Bloomberg wrote that with complaints piling up and a parliamentary grilling (partly in French, the horror) looming, the exit became inevitable.
He’ll step down by the end of Q3, and the board is now very publicly emphasizing that the next CEO should, you know, speak both official languages.
So yes—there were operational challenges, political pressure, and a tragic accident.
But in the end, what really grounded him was French: studied extensively, deployed minimally, and apparently career-ending when it mattered most.
