Air Canada president and CEO Michael Rousseau will retire sometime in the fall after nearly two decades with the airline, it said on Monday, a week after he made headlines by issuing an English-only message of condolence following the deadly crash of Flight 8646 in New York.
“Mr. Rousseau has reached a natural retirement age. His decision is consistent with the Board’s longstanding focus on CEO executive succession planning,” a process that has been underway for more than two years internally, an airline spokesperson told CBC News in a statement.
In an internal note to employees obtained by Radio-Canada, Rousseau said he was proud to have worn the airline’s emblem over his heart, but that time had come for him to retire. He will lead the company and serve on its board of directors until the end of the third quarter, he said.
Air Canada Flight 8646 departed from Montreal and collided with a fire truck upon landing at LaGuardia airport on March 22, killing two pilots — first officer Mackenzie Gunther and Capt. Antoine Forest — and injuring dozens of others.
Rousseau expressed condolences for the victims’ families in a video the next day. But he was quickly condemned for delivering the subtitled message almost entirely in English (aside from beginning with “bonjour” and ending with “merci”).
One of the pilots, Forest, was a francophone from Coteau-du-Lac, Que. Air Canada itself is headquartered in Montreal and the company’s own policy requires employees to be able to communicate in both of Canada’s official languages.
Air Canada says CEO will retire this year
Politicians of all stripes at both the federal and provincial level quickly weighed in.
Prime Minister Mark Carney said Rousseau’s message showed “a lack of judgment” and “compassion,” while Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet said it demonstrated a “sad and gross lack of respect” for Forest’s family.
Quebec Premier François Legault called for Rousseau’s resignation, and the Quebec National Assembly introduced a motion calling for his resignation.
Meanwhile, former Alberta premier Jason Kenney was among those who defended Rousseau, saying the executive’s time would be better spent on safety and reliability of services than language training.
Rousseau followed up with an apology on Thursday, saying he was “deeply saddened” that his “inability to speak French” had distracted from the mourning families’ grief. He added that, despite many years of lessons, he is still unable to “adequately” express himself in French — an apology that many said missed the mark.
By the end of the week, Rousseau had been summoned to Ottawa for an appearance in front of the Official Languages Committee. CBC News has reached out both to Air Canada and to the Senate committee to see if Rousseau plans to appear.
A committee clerk told CBC News that the motion to summon Rousseau still stands. He was invited to appear before May 1, but a specific date has not been set at this time, the clerk said.
As of Monday, the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages said it had received 2,360 complaints about his remarks.
Speaking during a housing announcement in Ontario, Prime Minister Carney said that Rousseau’s retirement was, by his judgment, “appropriate.”
“He was an effective operator of the airline and did many things and I salute him for that, but being a leader has many responsibilities,” Carney said.
It’s “essential” that the next CEO of Air Canada be bilingual, the prime minister told reporters. “That should have gone without saying to begin with, but recent events have underscored that.”
Transport Minister Stephen MacKinnon thanked Rousseau for his service in a social media post. Several Quebec politicians reacted to the news positively.
In a post on X, Legault welcomed Air Canada’s announcement, saying the next CEO should speak French as a “matter of respect for the employees, francophone customers, and all Quebecers.”
Quebec Premier says Air Canada CEO not speaking French is ‘insulting’
The two politicians currently vying for Legault’s job as head of the Coalition Avenir Québec party, Bernard Drainville and Christine Fréchette, also reacted on social media.
On Facebook, Drainville said Rousseau’s decision “was the only sensible thing to do,” while Fréchette said the company has no choice but to choose a bilingual CEO.
“The company is subject to the Official Languages Act; it is time that this is reflected at the highest levels of the company,” she wrote.
Though Fréchette hadn’t initially demanded the CEO step down, she later backtracked. Her delay was criticized by Drainville during the CAQ leadership debate over the weekend.
It wasn’t the first time that Rousseau came under fire for not speaking French.
Back in 2021, the executive delivered a speech almost entirely in English to a business crowd in Montreal. When pressed on the speech by the Quebec media, Rousseau struggled to answer in French and said he had lived in Montreal for 14 years without having to speak the language.
At the time, then-deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland wrote a letter to Air Canada’s board insisting that Rousseau improve his French-language skills, and that his knowledge of French be included as part of his annual performance review.
John Gradek, a lecturer and co-ordinator of the aviation management program at McGill University, said he wasn’t surprised to hear that Rousseau was retiring — and that the company’s criteria for its next CEO will almost certainly include the ability to speak French.
That the prime minister and transport minister weighed in on the remarks “was the straw that broke the camel’s back on this one, even though [Rousseau] basically said on Thursday that he’s not leaving. Well, he’s done,” said Gradek.
As for the timing of the announcement, “I think it was a question of when Mr. Rousseau was going to leave, and the political pressure put on Air Canada both provincially as well as federally was really something that pushed him to make a decision fairly quickly.”
