Eva Ludvig of the QCGN says Air Canada has had a poor record of respecting the Official Languages Act and that it’s “not surprising the problem goes all the way to the top.” During a lengthy interview with the cross-Canada CTV News Channel, she says that Michael Rousseau’s comments and lack of sensitivity, along with “a certain arrogance” toward the French language, have “really caused damage to the English-speaking community of Quebec…. I’m not sure an apology is enough.”

Watch more

As soon as it was announced that Mike Rousseau, the new CEO of Air Canada, would be making his maiden speech to a Montreal business audience in English, he put himself on a collision course with Quebec language hawks.

Even the Quebec Community Groups Network, the defenders of English-speakers’ rights, issued a caustic statement denouncing of Rousseau’s “tone-deaf” and “narrow-minded” comments. QCGN president Marlene Jennings lamented that his remarks inflicted “lasting damage on Quebec’s English-speaking community and the core national value of linguistic duality.”

Read more

“Mr. Rousseau’s narrow-minded comment that he does not feel the need to learn French feeds the myth that English-speaking Quebecers are a privileged minority indifferent to French,” said Marlene Jennings, the president of the Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN), an umbrella group made up of English-speaking community organizations.

Read more

The head of the Quebec Community Groups Network, a network that brings together English-speaking communities, also deplored Michael Rousseau’s unilingualism. “The CEO of Air Canada is a disgrace to his company, to Quebec’s English-speaking minority community, and to all Quebecers,” chirped Marlene Jennings.

Read more