Air Canada’s Rousseau affair shows the high cost of a seemingly ‘soft’ skill

The storm around Michael Rousseau was not a tempest in a teapot but a case study on how a seemingly “soft” requirement — language — can harden into a legal and governance issue overnight. Photo by Christinne Muschi/Bloomberg

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My initial temptation was to dismiss the latest controversy surrounding Michael Rousseau as political theatre — another Quebec language storm that will pass as quickly as it formed. How could an employer that knowingly hired a unilingual CEO take issue when it becomes an embarrassment?

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That would be a mistake. Beneath the noise lies a serious employment law question which Canadian employers ignore at their peril: when does language proficiency stop being a preference and become a legal obligation?

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The facts? Following a fatal crash at New York’s LaGuardia airport, Air Canada released a video statement from its CEO, Michael Rousseau, offering condolences. Apart from a token “bonjour” and “merci,” the message was entirely in English. One of the deceased pilots was francophone. The flight originated in Montreal. The intended audience included grieving families in Quebec.

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The backlash was immediate. Prime Minister Mark Carney weighed in. François Legault and the Quebec legislature expressed their outrage in the form of a unanimous vote demanding Rousseau’s resignation. Influential institutions such as La Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec — one of Air Canada’s largest shareholders — demanded accountability.

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At first glance, this appears to be a communications failure — and it certainly was that. But it raises a deeper issue: what are an employer’s obligations when language is central to its public identity, and what duties does a senior executive owe?

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Canadian employment law has long held that job requirements must be bona fide, derived in good faith. Employers cannot impose arbitrary qualifications unrelated to the role. But the inverse is equally true: where a requirement is intrinsic to the position, the employer is entitled, indeed expected, to enforce it.

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For a Montreal-based airline marketing itself as a national carrier, bilingualism is not performative or cosmetic. It is, as the outrage has made clear, a core competency. It goes to brand, regulatory environment and corporate legitimacy in a bilingual country.

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That does not mean that every employee must be bilingual. But it is difficult to argue that the chief executive officer of such an organization can be functionally unilingual without creating foreseeable risk; reputational, operational and legal.

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This is not Rousseau’s first encounter with the issue. In 2021, shortly after assuming his role, he acknowledged that he was not comfortable speaking French, despite living many years in Montreal. He promised improvement.

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That commitment matters. In employment law, representations made by an employee, particularly a senior one, can crystallize into expectations, even legal obligations.

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Employers sometimes include “best efforts” and developmental commitments in executive contracts: to achieve financial targets and potentially to integrate into corporate culture. Language acquisition, in the right context, can fall within that.