Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau is stepping down after dealing with heated backlash for a video assertion he made virtually fully in English after a deadly airplane crash earlier this month – snubbing Montreal’s official language of French.
Rousseau, who turned CEO in 2021 and served in high positions on the airline for almost twenty years, informed the board he’ll retire by the top of the third quarter of 2026, Air Canada stated in a press release Monday.
Requested whether or not Rousseau’s retirement is tied to the backlash, an Air Canada spokesperson stated Rousseau “has reached a pure retirement age” and that his plans to give up later this yr are in keeping with the board’s CEO succession planning.
His resignation follows widespread outrage in Quebec, the place the provincial legislature voted in favor of a movement calling for him to exit the corporate because the area’s Francophones blasted his majority-English video assertion as disrespectful.
In a four-minute video, Rousseau expressed his “deepest sorrow for everybody affected” within the crash at LaGuardia Airport – which killed each pilots and hospitalized 41 others – although the one phrases he spoke in French have been “bonjour” in the beginning and “merci” on the finish.
His feedback fueled a PR disaster for the airline, which was already in scorching water following the deadly collision, as hundreds of complaints have been filed with the Workplace of the Commissioner of Official Languages in Canada.
Canada’s nationwide airline relies in Montreal, the place the bulk language is French, and it’s also topic to the Official Languages Act, which requires companies to supply equal providers in English and French.
Many Canadians additionally identified that Antoine Forest, 30, one of many two pilots killed within the collision, grew up in Coteau-du-Lac – a metropolis in southwestern Quebec the place many residents communicate French.
In a written assertion launched in each English and French, Rousseau stated he was “deeply saddened” that his incapacity to talk French “diverted consideration” away from the victims’ households and Air Canada staffers concerned within the crash.
He admitted that his French expertise are weak “regardless of many classes over a number of years,” including, “I sincerely apologize for this, however I’m persevering with my efforts to enhance.”
In 2021, quickly after he was appointed CEO, Rousseau stoked related backlash when he gave a speech to a gaggle of Montreal enterprise leaders virtually fully in English.
Through the speech, Rousseau stated he took pleasure in the truth that he managed to dwell in Montreal for greater than a decade with out talking French.
He later apologized and promised to take French classes.
The deadly collision at LaGuardia Airport on March 22 happened throughout touchdown shortly earlier than midnight, when an Air Canada passenger airplane smashed right into a rescue truck responding to a separate emergency.
It obliterated the entrance of the jet and compelled the airport to shut for a lot of the following day.
Each pilots have been killed, together with Mackenzie Gunther, 24, the primary officer on the flight who grew up in a suburb in Ottawa, and Forest.
Audio caught an air visitors controller frantically attempting to cease the crash, crying out, “Cease, cease, cease, cease!”
He was later heard saying: “I tousled.”
