Adam Smith

Parliament is full of political theatre.

The nationalists don't need him to be grilled for 2 hours. Even in only 1/12 of that time, they would undoubtedly get a few embarrassing clips that will support their agenda, and it's likely the Bloc MP won't be the only one going after him aggressively, looking to curry favour with francophone voters.

If you think that's what this invitation is about, I suggest you read this thread and the numerous stories linked here. You're acting as though this invitation has been issued in a vacuum, instead of a highly charged climate of nonsense. This is about scoring cheap political points.

They may be more civilized than Question Period, but they're definitely not without their moments, and this is clearly a case where Rousseau is being set up.

I'm aware of that. It doesn't matter. They only need a couple instances of him pressing the earphone to his ear, looking puzzled, or needing help from one of his team to understand a question to make him look bad.

He has been invited to appear, and he absolutely can decline to do so. If the committee believes it has a legal right to question him, it can summon him.

That doesn't mean he has to walk in to a trap. He could send the members of his team who are in charge of this particular area of the company. Not every issue requires the CEO's attention, and no one has made a case that AC has a huge, systemic problem of AC failing to respect the Official Languages Act - 85 to 100 complaints a year, with tens of millions of passengers flying the airline. FTers alone generate more complaints than that about deflated seats. Should Rousseau have to testify about those in front of the transportation committee?

Dave510

I can't believe they're still on about this more than a month later. Does parliament have nothing better to do, such as running the country?

Sopwith

Perhaps Rousseau can take comfort in the fact that the qualifications one needs to become an MP are far less than those needed to become the CEO of a major airline.

Sopwith

If anyone is wondering, [ARG:6 UNDEFINED] is me.

Adam Smith

Others should mostly are your likes fine - they show up okay for me. This is a known technical issue, which I believe is covered in this thread.

Transpacificflyer

Committee hearings are scheduled months in advance. This is to allow participants time to prepare. The committee is the appropriate venue for a review of the situation, and it will certainly allow for a more reasonable and rational discussion of facts than on social media and general media. Committee hearings are an integral part of running the country. The Languages Act has been an important part of maintaining social peace and justice in Canada since its enactment. I will gladly accept the activities of such committees if it spares me sectarian strife seen in other countries.

You used the term Kangaroo court which is offensive and not appropriate for a legal activity; [Slang of U.S. origin.] An unfair, biased, or hasty judicial proceeding that ends in a harsh punishment; an unauthorized trial conducted by individuals who have taken the law into their own hands, such as those put on by vigilantes or prison inmates; a proceeding and its leaders who are considered sham, corrupt, and without regard for the law.

You have made multiple assumptions, several which are embarrassingly incorrect. The Bloc has a decent record of respecting parliamentary decorum. Do you even know who is on the committee? Describing the MPs in this manner is reprehensible. The MPs are there to represent their constituents. What you may dismiss as unimportant, may be important to other Canadians and their MPs are there to represent them.
The last Language committee hearing with the Air Canada CEO lasted 60 minutes, 10 minutes of which were comprised of the CEO's opening address. The next 50 minutes were questions and answers with each committee member allocated approximately 2 minutes of time to ask a question. In order to fit in every committee member's question, the questions had to be kept brief and there was no opportunity for political grandstanding. the likelihood of a conspiracy to get Mr. Rousseau is quite remote.

Ensuring compliance with federal laws is not cheap political points. The parliamentary committees are typically quite the opposite of highly charged climates. On the contrary, they are the model of decorum and efficiency. Please read some of the committee minutes. Committee members are respectful of each other and of people appearing before the committee.

Mr. Rousseau will put on his big boy pants and he will answer the polite questions. He should be able to answer questions in a coherent manner. Apparently, I have more confidence in his skills than you do.
The previous CEO, Calin Rovenescu appeared before the languages committee and managed quite well. You give the impression that this CEO will fail.

Please acquaint yourself with how parliamentary committees work and their intrinsic authority. Committees have virtually unlimited powers to compel the attendance of witnesses and to order the production of documents. this is accomplished through invitation. An invitation from a parliamentary committee isn't the same as an invite to one of your famous FT gatherings. To paraphrase noted legal scholar, Diane Davidson former General Legal Counsel for the House of Commons; One does not decline an invitation from a parliamentary committee. When a committee decides that a certain person should appear, it may direct the clerk of the committee to invite the person to appear or if necessary the committee may adopt a motion ordering that person to testify before the committee. There are no exceptions, except for MPs and Senators. I believe that the last notable time a parliamentary committee had to adopt a motion to summon someone was in respect to Hans Karl Schreiber in the Mulroney-Airbus affair, because Mr. Schreiber was in a detention facility. As a rule of thumb, it is unwise for the CEO of a federally regulated business which is dependent upon the federal and provincial governments collective fiscal generosity and regulatory benevolence, to decline to appear before a parliamentary committee.

Adam Smith

I'm not going to reply to all of your points, because we have a fundamental disagreement about how we expect this hearing to go, and there's no point in arguing about the details when we can't agree on the big picture.

Committee hearings may generally be civil and respectful. Previous hearings with AC executives may have been calm.

The current invitation to testify is being issued after a furor in the province of Quebec about the AC CEO's inability to speak French, and amidst ongoing efforts by the provincial government to reduce the rights of the non-francophone minority in the province. It's not part of any regularly scheduled review of AC's practices, or broader review of the Official Languages Act, and the language used suggests a clearly political intent to the hearing, as does the committee's insistence that Rousseau himself appear.

It's also quite possible for a hearing conducted in a completely civil manner to be a politically motivated waste of time and taxpayer dollars.

I don't believe there is any legitimate legislative or regulatory purpose to this hearing. I believe that the committee has invited Rousseau to get some good sound bites of them admonishing him for his unilingualism and perhaps get some embarrassing moments of him demonstrating said unilingualism. As a result, I think he would be better off trying to avoid this situation altogether.

You clearly feel differently, and passionately so. That's fine. But neither of us can predict how this will go.

You've contradicted yourself (and agreed with what I had previously said) in your next sentence, which I've emphasized in bold...

Parliament's own website (which I did consult before making my last post, your insinuations of my lack of research aside) agrees with me, by the way: "If a witness declines an invitation to appear, a committee may issue a summons to that witness, should the circumstances so require."

Your belief would be incorrect, since just in the past couple of years, here are a few people who have declined invitations to Parliamentary hearings: Kielburgers, WHO official Bruce Aylward, Zuckerberg and Sandberg...

I never said AC should ignore the hearings altogether. I said Rousseau should not go and suggested the relevant members of AC's management team would be better placed to handle questions from the committee.

Sopwith

If the parliamentary committee would spend as much time worrying about how AC treats its customers as they’re apparently prepared to spend worrying about the language(s) the CEO speaks, the aviation world (whose international language is English, in case you’ve forgotten) would be a better place.

songsc

How many votes can it buy?

Dave510

A committee hearing isn't necessarily an integral part of running a country; they could host a committee hearing about whether ketchup is Canada's national chip flavour and it would still not be an integral part of running the country.

Mr.Rousseau's personal (lack of) French speaking ability is not subject to The Official Languages Act.

The Lev

What Federal law has Mr. Rousseau or AC broken?

Jagboi

Mr. Rousseau did an apology today in french.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/air...-ceo-1.6393063

Stranger

At least he was smart enough to recognize he had no choice, bite the bullet and, no matter how painful, to learn French. Even though he likely won't ever be truly understandable.

(Irony being that his is a very French surname...)

VoodooYYC

It's ridiculous....all this pandering and political theatre. And now AC "reaffirms their commitment" to being a more bilingual company....how can you be more bilingual than AC? Someone farts on board, they are on the PA with the French version...

respectable_man

You’ve obviously never had to interact with any AC employee during an IRROP…. I mean: there are already so few of them around. If you have any difficulty with English in YYZ you are SOL with finding help on the floor. Tho come to think of it even if you are a polyglot you will have trouble getting help in YYZ during IRROP.