Languages commissioner investigating Air Canada CEO’s English-only condolence video

The Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages said it’s investigating a nearly English-only video where the CEO of Air Canada expressed his condolences to those affected by a deadly crash in March.

More than 2,400 complaints about Michael Rousseau’s video message have been received by the federal language commissioner, spokesperson Sonia Lamontagne said in an email.

While she confirmed an investigation is now underway, she can’t comment on the specific allegations or the nature of the investigation.

In a video posted one day after the March 22 crash, Rousseau said he was “deeply saddened” by the deaths of two pilots — one of whom was from Quebec — and expressed his condolences to those affected. But over the course of the nearly four-minute video, he spoke only two words of French — a “bonjour” at the beginning and a “merci” at the end.

The lack of French in the video sparked criticism from politicians in Quebec and Ottawa, with Prime Minister Mark Carney saying it showed “a lack of compassion.”

Rousseau announced several days later he would be retiring.

Two pilots, Antoine Forest and Mackenzie Gunther, died and 41 people were injured in the crash between an Air Canada Express flight from Montreal and an airport fire truck at LaGuardia airport in New York.

It was not the first time Rousseau’s lack of French caused controversy — after an English-only speech to the Montreal Chamber of Commerce in 2021, a reporter asked Rousseau how he could have lived in Montreal for 14 years without learning the language.

“Can you redo that in English?” Rousseau replied.

That incident, after which Rousseau promised to take French lessons, led to a record number of complaints to the language comissioner.

“In 2021, we received 2,680 admissible complaints related to the speech delivered by Air Canada’s CEO before the Chambre de commerce du Montréal métropolitain on Nov. 3, 2021,” Lamontagne said. “It is the incident that generated the greatest number of complaints in the history of the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages.

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