COLUMN: Air Canada, two dead pilots, and a CEO who speaks only English—welcome to Canada in 2026

2021, the first time

This isn’t the first time Michael Rousseau has faced this controversy. In November 2021, shortly after being named CEO, he publicly admitted that he didn’t speak French. He had lived in Montreal for 14 years without learning the language. He even added, with a nonchalance that sent a chill through Quebec, that it had never prevented him from getting by.

The outcry was massive. He promised to take classes. Four years later, in the wake of the deaths of his own employees, he recorded a message of condolence in English only.

What Four Years of Broken Promises Reveal

If a CEO who heads a company subject to the Official Languages Act cannot, after four years of public promises, utter two sentences of condolence in French, then the issue is no longer linguistic. It is cultural. It is structural. It touches on something far deeper than grammar.

It touches on respect.

The Official Narrative

Canada presents itself to the world as a bilingual country. Two official languages. Two founding cultures. It’s written in the Constitution. It’s embedded in its institutions. It’s printed on every box of cereal.

And yet. At the top of Canada’s largest companies, how many CEOs speak French? On Bay Street’s boards of directors, how many meetings are held in French? In Toronto’s glass skyscrapers, how many executives view bilingualism as anything more than a box to check on an annual report?

French as a Formality

Air Canada isn’t just any company. It’s the national carrier. It’s the company that, by law, must provide its services in both official languages. It’s the company that was founded as Trans-Canada Air Lines, which was nationalized, privatized, and bailed out by taxpayers—including seven million Francophones.

And yet, when the most serious moment arrives—the moment when words carry the weight of death—French disappears. As if it had never existed. As if it were nothing more than a regulatory ornament that is hung up when the Commissioner of Official Languages is watching, and taken down when he turns his back.

What Grief Demands

When someone loses a loved one, they don’t want a press release. They want to be seen. They want to be heard. They want the person speaking to them to understand—even imperfectly—the nature of their pain. And the language in which we suffer is almost always our mother tongue.

A French speaker who loses a loved one does not mourn in English. They do not look for words of comfort in a bilingual dictionary. Their pain is expressed in the language of their childhood, of their prayers, of the last words whispered before falling asleep.

Rousseau’s English as a Wall

Rousseau’s monolingual message was not an outstretched hand. It was a wall. A polished, well-lit wall, filmed with a high-quality camera—but a wall nonetheless. A wall that told Francophone families: I will speak to you in my language, not yours. And if you don’t understand, that’s not my problem.

Carney is right. This isn’t a matter of language policy. It’s a matter of basic compassion.

The Facts

Two Air Canada pilots have died. One of the airline’s planes crashed under circumstances that investigators are still analyzing. Experts have called it a miracle that there weren’t more victims. But for the families of the two pilots, there is no miracle. There is only loss.

These pilots had names. Families. Morning routines. Favorite coffee shops. People waiting for them at home. And yet, in the public debate, their deaths risk being overshadowed by the language controversy. That would be a second injustice.

Honor the Dead Before Addressing the Scandal

We must do two things at once. Honor the pilots. And demand that their employer honor them with dignity. The two are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary: it is precisely because these pilots deserve better than a slapdash message in a single language that the anger is justified.

We do not criticize Rousseau in spite of the mourning. We criticize him because of the mourning.

What the Law Requires

The Official Languages Act is clear. Federal institutions and federally regulated companies must serve the public in both official languages. Air Canada, as the national carrier subject to this law, has legal obligations that are not optional.

But the law talks about services. About forms. About websites. It doesn’t talk about compassion. It doesn’t legislate on the tone a CEO should use when facing death. And that is exactly where the problem lies: when the law is the ceiling of your commitment to bilingualism rather than the floor, you’ve already failed.

The Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages—a toothless watchdog

The Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages has been receiving complaints against Air Canada for decades. Reports have been written. Recommendations have been made. Symbolic fines have been imposed. And nothing has changed. French remains, in effect, the secondary language of a company that exists only because of a bilingual country.

You can’t legislate respect. But you can penalize contempt.

What the Summons Means

Rousseau has been summoned to appear before a House of Commons committee. On paper, it’s a mechanism for accountability. In practice, these hearings are often political theater in which lawmakers ask pointed questions, the witness dodges them with canned answers, and everyone goes home having pretended to resolve something.

And yet, this time could be different.

Why This Time Might Matter

Because people have died. Because the CEO has a track record. Because the prime minister himself has brought the issue to the table. And because Quebec, in 2026, is no longer willing to accept the half-hearted apologies of an English-speaking leader who treats French as an administrative inconvenience.

If the committee settles for soft questions and vague promises, it will confirm what many already suspect: that Canadian bilingualism is an institutional myth that no one has the courage to truly defend. But if it uses its powers to demand concrete changes—a bilingual CEO, bilingual crisis protocols, real sanctions—then this hearing could set a precedent.

The Accumulation

This isn’t an isolated incident. It’s the latest in a long series. Francophones in Quebec and the rest of Canada don’t need anyone to explain the institutional disregard for French to them. They experience it firsthand. Every day. In call centers that don’t offer service in French. In federal agencies where meetings are held in English “because it’s easier.” In airports where French announcements are a whisper after the loud English announcements.

The Rousseau case, 2026 edition, is not an isolated incident. It’s one more drop in a cup that has long since overflowed.

What the Silence Would Have Said

If Carney had said nothing, the message would have been devastating. A prime minister who lets a linguistic affront slide against the backdrop of an aviation tragedy is a prime minister who confirms that French is negotiable. That the pain of Francophones is a mere detail. That bilingualism is a postcard, not a commitment.

Carney spoke out. That’s the bare minimum. It remains to be seen whether his words will be followed by action.

A symptom, not a flaw

Michael Rousseau is no monster. He’s probably a competent manager, a savvy strategist, a man who knows how to read a financial statement and steer a restructuring. But he’s also the perfect product of a Canadian corporate system that views bilingualism as a cost rather than an asset.

In this system, speaking French isn’t an asset. It’s an extra. A bonus. Something that’s “nice to have” but never a “must have.” And when boards of directors select their CEOs, French carries less weight than a Wharton MBA or experience at McKinsey.

The systemic problem

Replace Rousseau tomorrow. Put someone else at the helm of Air Canada. If the system remains the same—if bilingualism isn’t a non-negotiable hiring criterion for executives at federal corporations—the next CEO will do the same thing. Maybe not in front of a camera. Maybe not after a crash. But in a thousand small, everyday decisions that send the same message: French is optional.

The problem isn’t Rousseau. The problem is the corporate Canada that produced him.

The Mirror Test

Let’s imagine for a moment. A French-speaking CEO at the helm of Air Canada. A plane crash. Two pilots dead. A message of condolence in French only. Not a word of English.

How long before the National Post runs it as a front-page headline? How many minutes before Toronto columnists demand his resignation? How many seconds before the word “separatist” appears in the comments?

The Asymmetry That Says It All

When an Anglophone ignores French, it’s an “oversight.” When a Francophone were to ignore English, it would be a declaration of war. This asymmetry is no accident. It is an exact reflection of the linguistic balance of power in Canada. And as long as we refuse to name it, it will continue to produce people like Rousseau, unilingual messages, and hollow apologies.

The mirror test never lies.

Beyond Language

There is something deeper than the language issue at play here. Something that Carney touched on, though perhaps without fully articulating it. Compassion is not an exercise in translation. It’s not about taking an English text and running it through Google Translate.

Compassion means asking yourself: Who is suffering? In what language does this person pray? In what language do they lull their children to sleep? In what language do they say “I love you” for the last time? And then, it means speaking to that person in that very language.

The very least the deceased deserve

The two pilots deserved better. Their families deserved better. The country deserved better. And if a CEO who earns millions of dollars a year cannot offer two minutes of condolences in the two official languages of the country whose planes he operates, then perhaps that CEO is not up to the responsibility he bears.

This isn’t a matter of linguistic perfection. No one was asking Rousseau for flawless French. No one was asking for eloquence. What was asked for was effort. What was asked for was a gesture. What was asked for was the basic decency to acknowledge that half of his country speaks another language—and that this language deserves to be heard in moments that matter.

Words are no longer enough

Carney spoke well. He identified the problem. He used the word “compassion,” which is the right word. But in Canadian politics, statements about bilingualism have the lifespan of a butterfly in November. They are born out of outrage, live for the duration of a news cycle, and die into oblivion.

If Carney wants this time to be different, he must take action. Concrete action.

Three steps that would change everything

First step: require that every CEO of a federal enterprise be functionally bilingual within two years of their appointment, under penalty of real financial sanctions. Second step: strengthen the powers of the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages so that it becomes a tribunal, not an advisor. Third step: tie the renewal of federal licenses and contracts to actual compliance with bilingualism—not theoretical compliance.

Three actions. Not three speeches. The difference between a prime minister who defends French and a prime minister who just talks about it.

What We’re Already Forgetting

In 72 hours, the media cycle will have moved on. Another crisis, another scandal, another outcry will replace this one. Rousseau may appear before the committee, say the right words, promise what’s expected, and return to his glass tower. The Frenchman will have become invisible once again.

But two families, somewhere in Canada, will continue to live with a void in their lives. An empty seat at the table. Silence where there used to be a voice. And they will know—they will know forever—that the CEO of the company for which their loved ones gave their lives wasn’t even able to tell them, in their own language, that he was sorry.

The only question that remains

Is Canada in 2026 a country where French matters? Not on paper. Not in speeches. Not in annual reports. But in the moments that truly matter—the moments of life, death, mourning, and truth?

Michael Rousseau’s answer—filmed, broadcast, and now archived for eternity—is no.

And yet. This country was built on two languages. It has survived through two languages. It deserves to be mourned in two languages.

Signed, Jacques PJ Provost