Sopwith

You mean like financial literacy?

garykung

I would say as a human.

yulred

That would be nice but, at the very least, competency in both official languages.

Logic dictates that they should be held to the same standard that they demand of others in this context.

How many of them are functionally bilingual?

The Lev

That likely depends on whether you are restricting bilingualism to Canada's two official languages or whether you are willing to accept other languages that make up the mosaic of modern Canada.

While I would be delighted if all Canadians could read and speak both official languages. it would probably be more useful for the MP of say Richmond Centre to be functional in Cantonese or Mandarin than French.
https://www.richmond.ca/__shared/......guages6251.pdf

jasdou

The representative of the head of state of Canada does not even speak French. These situations happen everywhere, at every level. One shouldn't be surprised that there's backlash from the Francophone community in this country when mastery of the French language is treated as a secondary, unnecessary and non-value adding skill. But we're getting dangerously close to being off topic - we may already be, actually, but I'll let the mods settle that debate.

RangerNS

What other Canadian private company, with an international presence, expects their CEO to be bilingual?

Symmetre

Now it is being reported that Chrystia Freeland says learning to speak French should become part of Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau’s performance review.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/cana...s-performance/

How remarkable that the federal government feels entitled to dictate employment terms to a publicly-owned company. Me thinks Ms Freeland's hat has grown a bit too tight.

garykung

And again - a violation of rights guaranteed by Canadian Charter.

yulred

Without commenting on the non-aviation aspects of all of that, I’ll just point out that the government is demanding that the head of an ostensibly private corporation be bilingual, when that isn’t a requirement for cabinet ministers.

Ergo, it’s a fair and relevant question given their own intervention on how AC is, or should be, run.

YUL

Again, Air Canada CEO's were never req'd to speak french on the get go. Just showing a willingness to learn french prevented those PR difficulties (well, disasters).

Robert Milton, Monty Brewer, Harris etc managed well the PR side of this.

And they also sometime faced loaded questions from some reporters, and answered/or evaded them w/o any difficulties.

That could have been prevented 100%.

jasdou

I think we are mostly in agreement. However AC's status and obligations are unique and defined in the ACPPA. The company simply cannot be considered equivalent to any other private corporation - even if having a CEO that can speak both official languages of Canada isn't an explicit requirement.

Transpacificflyer

A company that wishes to succeed does require that some of its senior management have a capability of understanding the market in which they operate. AC has a significant presence in the French language speaking parts of Canada and the world. A large part of targeted AC growth markets speak a common language - French. Specifically, North Africa and Central Africa.

The difference is that the Gov. General has made a distinct effort to speak the language of the people she represents. Her boss is pretty good in French too. The issue was the CEO's attitude and dismissive tone. A humble and wise man would have said shucks, I am working on it and not made comments that were sure to provoke a reaction.

Minister Freeland speaks 5 languages some of which are difficult, so not the right person to criticize in that regard. And yes, she had a point. As is pointed out elsewhere, AC has the basis with which to have the expectation that a senior executive have some basic knowledge of the two languages at least to the extent that he would not create a PR fiasco.

Nope.

yulred

We probably are.

That said, it still begs a rather obvious question: if AC wasn’t subject to ACPPA and still maintained an office/CEO in Montreal (for any number of reasons), would this speech have been an issue or not?

I’m inclined to believe that it would be; I don’t think the folk who were outraged, were outraged on the basis of non-compliance with an unwritten but implied requirement for CEOs to be bilingual under ACPPA. That would assume a much higher level of sophistication than the loaded questions that started this, and the swift and unthinking personal character assassination suggest.

That aside, it stands to reason that the folk responsible for governing an officially bilingual nation, should be bilingual themselves, so ACPPA or no ACPPA, that line of reasoning still holds.

yyztozag

Oh my. They really can't stop meddling .

The Lev

AC also has significant presence in Spanish, German and Chinese markets. The CEO is going to have to be quite linguist.