Do we have any quebecois on tildes? I would be really interested in hearing a view opposed to my own knee-jerk perspective, which is that it's silly that the main issue at hand is how well the CEO...
Do we have any quebecois on tildes? I would be really interested in hearing a view opposed to my own knee-jerk perspective, which is that it's silly that the main issue at hand is how well the CEO of Air Canada speaks French. Where am I wrong?
I'm french Canadian, but not québécois. Frankly, it's nice that a CEO is being shamed for their lack of french. We are a bilingual country, the biggest airline of this bilingual country should be...
Exemplary
I'm french Canadian, but not québécois. Frankly, it's nice that a CEO is being shamed for their lack of french. We are a bilingual country, the biggest airline of this bilingual country should be able to say more than two words in french. I agree, it's not strictly and legally required (it would be if they had not privatized Air Canada), but it would be respectful. The CEO had previously said he was going to learn it last bad PR cycle, but that turned out to be a lie.
We live in a period where there are more and more attacks on french in Canada (e.g. why do we have to have the Official Language Act when we can just let AI do it all). Canada has a long history of attempting to do cultural genocide against francophones and it's nice when we can get the smallest of small wins.
This is kinda crazy to me, but I admittedly don't have the cultural background, since I'm American. For most of our far saner history than the current administration, the US had no official...
This is kinda crazy to me, but I admittedly don't have the cultural background, since I'm American.
For most of our far saner history than the current administration, the US had no official language, but we're a defacto bilingual nation as well; 19% of Americans speak spanish (not too far off from the proportion of Canadian French speakers, and way more in absolute terms). The idea of the CEO of a company being fired for not speaking Spanish is so wild of an idea to me.
I guess that may have something to do with the fact that Spanish language use in the US is growing, not shrinking, and maybe some racism thrown in.
I'm curious, do you think it would be a similar situation if it was the inverse? That is, if there were a CEO that only spoke French, would people ask for his resignation?
Air Canada isn't just some random private company though, it was once a Crown Corporation (i.e. Canadian government owned and operated) before it was controversially privatized in the late 80s....
The idea of the CEO of a company being fired for not speaking Spanish is so wild of an idea to me.
Air Canada isn't just some random private company though, it was once a Crown Corporation (i.e. Canadian government owned and operated) before it was controversially privatized in the late 80s. But despite its privatization it was still partially owned by our government up until very recently, and it's still our national "flag carrier" airline so has historically been given hugely preferential treatment by our government, like major tax benefits, subsidies, and has even received several major bailouts over the years as well (the latest of which was during COVID).
And while the Air Canada CEO isn't a federal government employee anymore, therefor isn't required by law to be bilingual like other government employees, they are pretty much as close to a government employee as a private company CEO can get in Canada. So the cultural (and political) expectation is that they absolutely should be able to speak both languages... especially since Air Canada is headquartered in Montreal!
Now also add to that the fact that this same CEO failed to follow through with the promise they made 4 years ago to learn French the last time they caused a major controversy for being unable to speak it, and I think you can maybe start to understand better why this is a very different situation than your comparison of an American CEO being fired for not being able to speak Spanish.
As a monolingual American, I think this is the kicker for me. Like if Air Canada was based in Toronto or Vancouver or even Ottawa, fine, whatever. But based in Montreal? And he can't speak French?...
especially since Air Canada is headquartered in Montreal!
As a monolingual American, I think this is the kicker for me. Like if Air Canada was based in Toronto or Vancouver or even Ottawa, fine, whatever. But based in Montreal? And he can't speak French? Even a little? Even with a Canadian English accent? Ehhhhh...
Like given it's located in Montreal, I have to imagine they're pulling a fair amount of labor from the local area. I'm sure most if not all employees are bilingual. But still. It does seem a tad disrespectful. Especially given the history.
I can't speculate on this because it could never happen now. A world where Air Canada (or a similarly large Corp) had a french only CEO would mean that bilingualism is significantly healthier and...
I'm curious, do you think it would be a similar situation if it was the inverse? That is, if there were a CEO that only spoke French, would people ask for his resignation?
I can't speculate on this because it could never happen now. A world where Air Canada (or a similarly large Corp) had a french only CEO would mean that bilingualism is significantly healthier and would likely mean that it's not as big a deal. Or maybe in this world french is dominant and English is in a minority position and then yes it's a problem.
To be frank about US culture: no FAA chair or airline CEO based in a highly spanish-speaking region (if that even exists), etc., would ever be dragged for not giving bilingual condolences. I'm not...
To be frank about US culture: no FAA chair or airline CEO based in a highly spanish-speaking region (if that even exists), etc., would ever be dragged for not giving bilingual condolences. I'm not defending it, just making clear that this is not because it's all private companies. I think it's a distinct difference in expectations of decency between the US and Canadian societies.
Other thought is that cultural and/or violent genocide should be eradicated. Down here in the US we focus almost solely on enslaved Black populations rather than the much older native population. Is that analogous in Canadian society to focusing on francophone people vs. First Nations? (I'm not asking to accuse or start a fight. Just wondering about the cultural positions of those issues in Canada compared to US).
It's the destruction or eradication of a particular culture, usually a minority culture relative to the majority. See: Uighur Muslims in China, Ukrainians in Russian-occupied Donbas, Palestinians...
It's the destruction or eradication of a particular culture, usually a minority culture relative to the majority. See: Uighur Muslims in China, Ukrainians in Russian-occupied Donbas, Palestinians in Israel, Indigenous Tribes and First Nations in NA ("Save the man, kill the Indian")...
Some of those also involve more overtly violent genocides as well as cultural genocide, but yeah, it's trying to eradicate a culture, usually through forced assimilation to the majority.
Some of those also involve more overtly violent genocides as well as cultural genocide, but yeah, it's trying to eradicate a culture, usually through forced assimilation to the majority.
Good point - I thought about including Jewish people in there, but then you get into the messy gray area of "isn't this just regular old genocide?" Typically, cultural genocide tries to keep the...
Good point - I thought about including Jewish people in there, but then you get into the messy gray area of "isn't this just regular old genocide?" Typically, cultural genocide tries to keep the people alive, and focuses more on "re-education", but in most of my examples, a lot of people were also killed.
Here is an example from Canada. For decades the Canadian government was taking Indigenous people's children from their parents to "teach them" in government schools away from their parents (in...
Here is an example from Canada. For decades the Canadian government was taking Indigenous people's children from their parents to "teach them" in government schools away from their parents (in order to destroy their culture). They were generally not attempting to eradicate them (tho lots and lots of them died), just eradicate their indigenous identity.
The Canadian government (or various provincial governments) have done similar (but significantly less extreme) things to french speaking citizens in Canada. For example (and they won't teach you this in anglophone schools), they made it illegal to teach students in french in Ontario in the 1910s and 1920s. This led to many francophones losing their culture and heritage by being assimilated.
Other good examples are Australia and NZ, where children were taken from their parents and English would be literally beaten into them, with the idea of producing brown Englishmen. You're not...
Other good examples are Australia and NZ, where children were taken from their parents and English would be literally beaten into them, with the idea of producing brown Englishmen. You're not killing the kid, but you're trying to kill the indigenous identity, and the easiest way to do that is to kill the language (by taking children from their parents by force).
I mean, the flight that crashed was from Montreal, and that means probably a decent portion of the passengers (along with, according to this article, one of the deceased pilots) on that flight...
I mean, the flight that crashed was from Montreal, and that means probably a decent portion of the passengers (along with, according to this article, one of the deceased pilots) on that flight were Francophone (and thus, so are their families). According to this article, Air Canada itself is also based in Quebec. Even without a particularly deep understanding of Canadian politics when it comes to bilingualism and Francophone Canada, it seems pretty obvious that not offering even a token effort to use French in a speech offering condolences to the victims of that crash and their families is a little tasteless. You're putting the burden of dealing with a second language on the bereaved family members, rather than taking even the effort to have someone translate the statement and deliver it in spoken French. I highly doubt there would be similar controversy if he delivered a French speech with some imperfect pronunciation or minor mistakes.
This obviously is going to be even worse PR-wise when you (the CEO of Air Canada) have already been criticized for refusing to learn French. And he's a CEO, so doing shit like this and not making it reflect badly on the company is a pretty big part of his job, no? Making bad PR moves is a reasonable thing for there to be negative consequences for a CEO.
I think someone with a deeper understanding could explain more about the politics of language in Canada, and in this case the inequality in who is expected to be bilingual (would Air Canada ever have had a CEO who spoke only French and not English? I doubt it) but I'm not even Canadian much less Francophone, so I can't go much deeper than my surface-take, which is that it seems kinda obvious to also use the local language in at least a token fashion for a statement like this, especially for what was definitely a pre-written prepared statement that can easily be translated for you in advance, and especially on such an emotional topic.
Not a citizen, but long-term resident: Canada has two official national languages (plus recognized territorial languages for First Nations), and it's federal law that any federal guidance needs to...
Not a citizen, but long-term resident: Canada has two official national languages (plus recognized territorial languages for First Nations), and it's federal law that any federal guidance needs to be provided in both national languages. Items at the grocery store or pharmacy have labels printed in both languages. Emails from the government and many companies are written in both languages. Debates for Prime Minister are held in English and French (leading to much speculation about how badly some candidates will speak French).
Provinces vary a lot based on how much French they speak, where there's very few speakers in western Canada, quite a lot further east (especially in New Brunswick and Ontario), and Québec is the hub of French language protection, requiring that immigrants have proficiency in French and street signs etc must be in French. School districts are divided into being anglophone or Francophone, and universities have dominant languages. It's a big deal, and a huge part of life on Canada, and a major tension point for politics, because...
Most Canadians don't speak French. To work for the federal government, you need to pass a proficiency test in both languages, but passing the French portion doesn't necessarily mean you're sufficiently proficient to be able to help a Francophone caller with their problems, and that's a very frequent complaint from francophones (and they're right). French in Canada also has strong dialects, where Québécois sounds very different from Chiac in New Brunswick, and both sound quite different from Parisian French (which is what many Canadian schools and the military teach, for some bizarre reason). Many anglophone students also undergo French immersion, where they take French classes taught by Francophone teachers in an anglophone school, but this is different from attending a Francophone school. English is often treated as the "default" language, and despite Quebec's laws to protect French, the use of French has declined over time there, leading to concerns for francophones and support for them, especially considering their issues already in getting sufficient help in French. These concerns are so strong that one of the biggest political parties in Quebec is the Bloc Québécois, which exists pretty much entirely to advocate for Quebec alone and Francophone rights in particular, much to the irritation of most other provinces (which seems needlessly self involved, from their perspective).
Also: Air Canada is by far the biggest airline in Canada, and because Canada has so few people and is so enormous in terms of land area, most people are going to be stuck using Air Canada at some point (especially because there are so few other airline options - it's very different from the USA).
Now: take the above comment and contextualize that with everything I just wrote. This is yet another example of anglophones thinking they don't need to speak French, and it's even more egregious given that the flight originated from Montreal and Air Canada is such an important company, used by most Canadians. You might expect this from someone in Alberta, but you really can't be the CEO of the biggest Canadian airline and not expect to get pushback!
"He delivered his condolence video message in English, with French subtitles," according to the article. I get that it's not the same thing as just speaking French, and also that this is a...
it seems pretty obvious that not offering even a token effort to use French in a speech offering condolences to the victims of that crash and their families is a little tasteless
"He delivered his condolence video message in English, with French subtitles," according to the article. I get that it's not the same thing as just speaking French, and also that this is a cultural sensitivity issue that I'm far removed from (but lots of Canadians take seriously). Just pointing out that he did offer (arguably more than) a token effort. Assuming the translation was sound, that doesn't strike me as remotely unreasonable — I'm not sure if I've ever seen a CEO or politician deliver a speech with even that basic affordance. But again, it seems silly to me because I'm not in that world, and I'm really unqualified to talk about it.
Offering French subtitles does not meet the threshold for a token effort to speak French in a bilingual country from the CEO of a company based in a Francophone province when addressing a group of...
Offering French subtitles does not meet the threshold for a token effort to speak French in a bilingual country from the CEO of a company based in a Francophone province when addressing a group of bereaved Francophones. You'd hear more spoken French over the airline intercom on one of Air Canada's flights from Montreal.
Despite years of French in school and Duolingo (I know), I don't speak French with any proficiency. You better believe if I had to speak to grieving families I'd have practiced a statement for...
Despite years of French in school and Duolingo (I know), I don't speak French with any proficiency.
You better believe if I had to speak to grieving families I'd have practiced a statement for hours. That's ignoring the "being a CEO and being able to afford legitimate immersion education" thing. He didn't even try, and that's just insulting.
To support with an example: When Richard Feynman was visiting a university in Brasil to give a talk (and granted, he'd been visiting regularly for a few years by that point, so he had some basic...
To support with an example: When Richard Feynman was visiting a university in Brasil to give a talk (and granted, he'd been visiting regularly for a few years by that point, so he had some basic Portuguese but none for scientific terminology) he practised his speech for days with assistants making sure he got the pronunciation right. Then he attended and heard the lecturers before him all delivering theirs in English, so, embarrassed, he got up, went to the lectern, and apologised for speaking Portuguese as it was what he'd prepared the speech in.
(https://southerncrossreview.org/81/feynman-brazil.html)
Now granted a CEO does have more matters to attend to than spend days on a single statement, and it's not like he could have planned for this to happen, but he could have got someone to write, like, a couple of sentences at the end of the subtitled statement for him to memorise. He could have even done a few takes and dubbed in the one that had the fewest mistakes. Something.
Respecting that you mention you're not in that world (which I might take to mean Canada generally?), so just providing a little context (though, as an anglo). In the Canadian context generally,...
Respecting that you mention you're not in that world (which I might take to mean Canada generally?), so just providing a little context (though, as an anglo). In the Canadian context generally, no, subtitles aren't a token effort. Even less so in a Quebec context, where it might literally have been a legal requirement to have the french subtitles (there are laws that require French language availability).
As understanding as I am that learning a language as an adult can be difficult (hell, my own french is mediocre), he took on a high-responsibility job with a certain requirement that he'd already been called out on and failed to uphold a promise to improve. He has all the resources available to him and lives in a bilingual city. This shows a lack of respect. Add on to that the emotional facet that one of his francophone workers died only heightens that sentiment.
(Edit - sorry, didn't mean to dogpile. I was slowly writing my message while someone else replied!)
Curious for the same reason. Perhaps there is more to it and this is more an excuse to oust a CEO, but two pilots died due to a tragic accident caused by an overworked air traffic controller as a...
Curious for the same reason. Perhaps there is more to it and this is more an excuse to oust a CEO, but two pilots died due to a tragic accident caused by an overworked air traffic controller as a result of the United States' continued downward spiral and this guy is losing his job because he didn't fumble through a condolences video shot in a language he does not speak?
A video with french subtitles, no less! Right, I agree. This was the CEO’s initial response: And I’ve got to say, I find that pretty reasonable… which is why I’m hoping a quebecois can step in and...
this guy is losing his job because he didn't fumble through a condolences video shot in a language he does not speak?
A video with french subtitles, no less!
Right, I agree. This was the CEO’s initial response:
“I am deeply saddened that my inability to speak French has diverted attention from the profound grief of the families and the great resilience of Air Canada’s employees, who have demonstrated outstanding professionalism despite the events of the past few days,” Rousseau said in a statement.
“Despite many lessons over several years, unfortunately, I am still unable to express myself adequately in French. I sincerely apologize for this, but I am continuing my efforts to improve.”
And I’ve got to say, I find that pretty reasonable… which is why I’m hoping a quebecois can step in and share an alternative perspective. I have some familiarity with how militant Quebec is about the use of French, but I’ve never really understood why.
Imagine English isn't your language, and the English have had a history of violently "expelling" your ancestors from nearby areas (that's what the Cajuns of Louisiana are: displaced Acadians from...
Imagine English isn't your language, and the English have had a history of violently "expelling" your ancestors from nearby areas (that's what the Cajuns of Louisiana are: displaced Acadians from parts of what is now Maine) and trying to eradicate the language you speak.
Quebec is the largest safe haven of the French language in Canada, and legally requires its use in many cases. Like signage around Montreal will be bilingual. Statements from an airline flying out of Quebec kind of fit.
I grew up in Maine, and have literally met Franco-Americans under 60 who said that their parents specifically didn't want them to learn French so they wouldn't be discriminated against. (Under a century ago, schools even used corporal punishment on students for speaking it.)
Because French is one of the two national languages, but the federal government does very little to protect the rights of French speakers, who do exist outside of Québec. Québec worked to do what...
Because French is one of the two national languages, but the federal government does very little to protect the rights of French speakers, who do exist outside of Québec. Québec worked to do what the federal government wouldn't, and while they may come off as militant to anglophones, in many ways, they are the ones who are working hardest to make sure that the rights of francophones are recognized. The disconnect may be that you are not familiar with what it's like to live in a country with national languages, and unequal enforcement of language rights (apologies if I'm incorrect).
If you don't mind me saying, you guys seem fairly unique in that french-speaking Canadians often don't learn English whereas in Europe most citizens tend to learn multiple national languages....
If you don't mind me saying, you guys seem fairly unique in that french-speaking Canadians often don't learn English whereas in Europe most citizens tend to learn multiple national languages. Basically all Catalans speak Spanish, for example. Begrudgingly, perhaps, but speak it nonetheless.
I think it's that aspect that I don't really understand.
I'm not sure where you got the impression that french-speaking Canadians do not speak english as well. Nearly a majority of all québécois people can hold a conversation in english, and I am sure...
I'm not sure where you got the impression that french-speaking Canadians do not speak english as well. Nearly a majority of all québécois people can hold a conversation in english, and I am sure that the rates are even higher for francophones outside of the province.
The same can certainly not be said of the english speaking side, considering the bilingualism rate across the country, according to the last census data, is at 18%, and Quebec accounts for 23 % of the total Canadian population.
There's a longstanding joke in Quebec that describes Canadian bilingualism as "The french speak english, and the english also speak english."!
Phrased differently, that's less than half. To return to my catalan example, the rate is 97% speak Spanish and 99% understand it. Perhaps there are good reasons for this, and there are analogues:...
Nearly a majority of all québécois people can hold a conversation in english,
Phrased differently, that's less than half. To return to my catalan example, the rate is 97% speak Spanish and 99% understand it.
Perhaps there are good reasons for this, and there are analogues: well under half of walloon belgians also speak Flemish. But nonetheless it is not crazy to suggest that quebecois do not often learn English: in fact statistically that is correct in a literal sense.
I am neither Francophone nor Canadian :) but I lived in Canada long enough and have enough family there to know a bit about language dynamics. One thing to consider is that many neighborhoods and...
I am neither Francophone nor Canadian :) but I lived in Canada long enough and have enough family there to know a bit about language dynamics. One thing to consider is that many neighborhoods and even regions are highly segregated, where they really either speak one or the other, and while you may learn the other in school, no one in your community regularly speaks it and so you may get rusty. It's actually a major issue with French immersion, where you may learn French technical terms as an anglophone for more than a decade, attend an anglophone university, and then feel completely lost because you don't know the terminology in English! I know quite a few people who had this issue.
It is weird, and I'm guessing it's a historical artifact from colonialism? The Acadians and the French had their colonies, the English had their colonies, and many of those historical language divisions are still present after a couple hundred years. While they are meant to be equal in status, in reality they aren't. I think another thing frustrating for Francophones is that they do try to learn English (because so many anglophones come to their communities), but many anglophones don't bother to learn French, or speak it exceedingly poorly, and that also causes the francophones anger, which then makes Québec, for example, take a very ungracious stance on English (to reflect how they feel about anglophones, and in particular Canadian anglophones).
You don't want to know how First Nations are treated, and how many (any?) people in Ottawa speak Inuktitut (one of the territorial languages of Nunavut).
To agree with you here: I think Americans may not realize that, perhaps because they don't have an official national language, the US, and particularly the US government, is often quite a bit more...
The disconnect may be that you are not familiar with what it's like to live in a country with national languages, and unequal enforcement of language rights (apologies if I'm incorrect).
To agree with you here: I think Americans may not realize that, perhaps because they don't have an official national language, the US, and particularly the US government, is often quite a bit more accommodating of other languages than many countries, and that in turn may make people less offended by cases like these, or less likely see them as part of a wider discrimination against their language or promotion of another. That's likely even more the case when compared to countries that, as you point out, say they have multiple national languages, sometimes quite vocally, but in practice treat them very unequally.
All those government forms available in multiple languages in the US, for example? In many countries, including many progressive European ones, they often don't exist. Sometimes, they don't exist in languages that are legally official, and that they are supposedly required to exist in. The ability to deal with the government in other languages? Yes, it's not always available or great in the US, but in other countries, it may be legally prohibited. Can you refer to a government agency by its official name, in a nominally officially language, in a professional context, and not be laughed out of the room and told to refer to it by its name in the right language? That's not guaranteed.
I wonder how the counterfactual would have been received - if he did try to do the speech in French, and butchered it because he’s not a fluent speaker. I’ve only been to Montreal three times, but...
I wonder how the counterfactual would have been received - if he did try to do the speech in French, and butchered it because he’s not a fluent speaker.
I’ve only been to Montreal three times, but in my experience, while almost everyone in the world appreciates when foreigners try to learn their language, the French are an exception - that you defile their beautiful language with your disgusting foreign accent is an affront to their existence.
I haven’t been to French Canada, but my experience in France proper is the exact opposite. I found the French to be incredibly nice as long as you seem to be trying to speak their language, and...
I haven’t been to French Canada, but my experience in France proper is the exact opposite. I found the French to be incredibly nice as long as you seem to be trying to speak their language, and happy to fall back to English if they speak it (which the vast majority in France do not).
When I was last there it was 50/50 no reaction 50/50 weirdly offended. Their faces would drop and they would aggressively asset that they can speak English or that I’m saying it wrong. I’m not...
When I was last there it was 50/50 no reaction 50/50 weirdly offended. Their faces would drop and they would aggressively asset that they can speak English or that I’m saying it wrong. I’m not talking sentences here, more like hello, thank you, this one, etc. Usual tourist fare.
That's entirely possible. My experiences have been almost universally positive through my many trips there. My only issues have been one total dick who perfectly fit the stereotype (probably more...
That's entirely possible. My experiences have been almost universally positive through my many trips there. My only issues have been one total dick who perfectly fit the stereotype (probably more intense than the stereotype) and one lady in my very first day there who didn't really seem to know how to pronounce French, so I'm not sure what her deal was (she understand neither my order for un chocolat nor a "hot chocolate" and eventually said "oh! Choh-coh-late!").
My experience matches yours as well. I visited France with family around 8 years ago now and the people there were kind and accommodating to us tourists, falling back to English once my super...
My experience matches yours as well. I visited France with family around 8 years ago now and the people there were kind and accommodating to us tourists, falling back to English once my super limited French knowledge was exhausted. French Canada was a wildly different beast however. I visited Montreal and Quebec City last year and the only time I heard English being spoken was either from my family members or the tour guide that took us around Quebec City. When I'd go to Tim Hortons for a morning coffee, they'd only speak French and I had to translate my requests into French using my phone. They'd just stare at me blankly if I spoke English or even tried to speak the French phrases from my phone.
Beautiful place to visit though, highly recommend.
Same. I heard all these stories, but I had no bad experiences if I legitimately tried to use the native language. This has been my experience in every single country I've ever been to.
Same. I heard all these stories, but I had no bad experiences if I legitimately tried to use the native language. This has been my experience in every single country I've ever been to.
Everyone has good and bad days - I must have caught everyone I met in Quebec (during a brief visit in and around Quebec City last Autumn) on a good day, as my atrocious french was met with an...
Everyone has good and bad days - I must have caught everyone I met in Quebec (during a brief visit in and around Quebec City last Autumn) on a good day, as my atrocious french was met with an abundance of patience every time I tried.
Further, it's hard to blame them being defensive. Culture is hard to change, but good luck recovering it if it's lost. We have enough influence from the States that I fully support the Canadian content rules. There's a marked difference between Canadians and Americans, and I appreciate the re-enforcement from media regarding language, social norms, and culture in general. I'd imagine the Quebecois would feel similarly.
I meant the French in France. I was only in Quebec for business so I just spoke English and that seemed fine, although I didn’t have to speak to that many people.
I meant the French in France. I was only in Quebec for business so I just spoke English and that seemed fine, although I didn’t have to speak to that many people.
You might get that attitude in Paris, where I'm told people can be uniquely rude, but when I've gone to Southern France I've had the exact opposite experience with the locals. Everyone was...
You might get that attitude in Paris, where I'm told people can be uniquely rude, but when I've gone to Southern France I've had the exact opposite experience with the locals. Everyone was incredibly friendly and super accommodating of my non-existent French (I tried to lead with greeting in French but I mostly did a lot of pointing lol). But also most of the people I encountered didn't speak English either, so maybe that was a factor.
When I visited Montreal myself, I had no problem with just speaking English, but I suspect this was because of just how touristy the venues were lol, since it was part of a work meet-up.
Since taking over as CEO in 2021 Air Canada stock has lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 30% of its value. I'd be stunned if that didn't have at least something to do with this decision. But I...
Perhaps there is more to it and this is more an excuse to oust a CEO
Since taking over as CEO in 2021 Air Canada stock has lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 30% of its value. I'd be stunned if that didn't have at least something to do with this decision. But I too am curious to hear what a local has to say.
I think the easiest way to see why there is offence would be to picture something similar: The CEO of Ford makes a video expressing condolences for something that happens in America. In the video,...
I think the easiest way to see why there is offence would be to picture something similar:
The CEO of Ford makes a video expressing condolences for something that happens in America. In the video, he speaks only Spanish, with English subtitles. Then later he admits that he doesn't speak English. There would be a lot of questions that people would have, like "why doesn't the face of this company speak the language of the country?"
This is almost exactly the same, it's just that in this case, the CEO speaks the same language as all of us here.
Not Francophone Canadian, but living in Acadian Canada. The hurt feelings are a present tense here. For folks wondering who cares, maybe think of it as not using inclusive pronouns if one of the...
Exemplary
Not Francophone Canadian, but living in Acadian Canada. The hurt feelings are a present tense here.
For folks wondering who cares, maybe think of it as not using inclusive pronouns if one of the pilots was non-binary, or referring to the pilots with a dead name, or sending pork gift baskets to the grieving families. Bilingualism isn't our fight, but it is still a hurtful, currently threatening one to many. What's at stake is cultural genocide within living memory.
Even our new prime minister got roasted pretty hard for not speaking good enough French. Point being: it's easy for outsiders to say "this is just x who cares" when you don't see the history of open wounds.
:) he improved so much I could even tell, and that's saying a lot based on how slowly and terribly I'm learning French. Another example, Carney's Japanese was fairly atrocious but the attitude and...
:) he improved so much I could even tell, and that's saying a lot based on how slowly and terribly I'm learning French.
Another example, Carney's Japanese was fairly atrocious but the attitude and effort showed: as a guest just having a fun visit, he spoke more of his host's language than this CEO did during a major tragedy for his Montreal based company. And it's not Carney's job to speak Japanese, whereas it was literally this guy's job to learn some French. He couldn't even work Air Canada call center or airport desk or flight attendants with this.
Actors hire accent coaches. This guy was paid a ton of money to do what, exactly, for Canadians, for shareholders and... In this instance, getting a coach to drill you overnight for a couple sentences is not that hard. Wear an ear piece, have words be fed to you one at a time.
Do we have any quebecois on tildes? I would be really interested in hearing a view opposed to my own knee-jerk perspective, which is that it's silly that the main issue at hand is how well the CEO of Air Canada speaks French. Where am I wrong?
I'm french Canadian, but not québécois. Frankly, it's nice that a CEO is being shamed for their lack of french. We are a bilingual country, the biggest airline of this bilingual country should be able to say more than two words in french. I agree, it's not strictly and legally required (it would be if they had not privatized Air Canada), but it would be respectful. The CEO had previously said he was going to learn it last bad PR cycle, but that turned out to be a lie.
We live in a period where there are more and more attacks on french in Canada (e.g. why do we have to have the Official Language Act when we can just let AI do it all). Canada has a long history of attempting to do cultural genocide against francophones and it's nice when we can get the smallest of small wins.
This is kinda crazy to me, but I admittedly don't have the cultural background, since I'm American.
For most of our far saner history than the current administration, the US had no official language, but we're a defacto bilingual nation as well; 19% of Americans speak spanish (not too far off from the proportion of Canadian French speakers, and way more in absolute terms). The idea of the CEO of a company being fired for not speaking Spanish is so wild of an idea to me.
I guess that may have something to do with the fact that Spanish language use in the US is growing, not shrinking, and maybe some racism thrown in.
I'm curious, do you think it would be a similar situation if it was the inverse? That is, if there were a CEO that only spoke French, would people ask for his resignation?
Air Canada isn't just some random private company though, it was once a Crown Corporation (i.e. Canadian government owned and operated) before it was controversially privatized in the late 80s. But despite its privatization it was still partially owned by our government up until very recently, and it's still our national "flag carrier" airline so has historically been given hugely preferential treatment by our government, like major tax benefits, subsidies, and has even received several major bailouts over the years as well (the latest of which was during COVID).
And while the Air Canada CEO isn't a federal government employee anymore, therefor isn't required by law to be bilingual like other government employees, they are pretty much as close to a government employee as a private company CEO can get in Canada. So the cultural (and political) expectation is that they absolutely should be able to speak both languages... especially since Air Canada is headquartered in Montreal!
Now also add to that the fact that this same CEO failed to follow through with the promise they made 4 years ago to learn French the last time they caused a major controversy for being unable to speak it, and I think you can maybe start to understand better why this is a very different situation than your comparison of an American CEO being fired for not being able to speak Spanish.
As a monolingual American, I think this is the kicker for me. Like if Air Canada was based in Toronto or Vancouver or even Ottawa, fine, whatever. But based in Montreal? And he can't speak French? Even a little? Even with a Canadian English accent? Ehhhhh...
Like given it's located in Montreal, I have to imagine they're pulling a fair amount of labor from the local area. I'm sure most if not all employees are bilingual. But still. It does seem a tad disrespectful. Especially given the history.
Thank you. This helped me understand.
I can't speculate on this because it could never happen now. A world where Air Canada (or a similarly large Corp) had a french only CEO would mean that bilingualism is significantly healthier and would likely mean that it's not as big a deal. Or maybe in this world french is dominant and English is in a minority position and then yes it's a problem.
We don't live in this world.
To be frank about US culture: no FAA chair or airline CEO based in a highly spanish-speaking region (if that even exists), etc., would ever be dragged for not giving bilingual condolences. I'm not defending it, just making clear that this is not because it's all private companies. I think it's a distinct difference in expectations of decency between the US and Canadian societies.
Other thought is that cultural and/or violent genocide should be eradicated. Down here in the US we focus almost solely on enslaved Black populations rather than the much older native population. Is that analogous in Canadian society to focusing on francophone people vs. First Nations? (I'm not asking to accuse or start a fight. Just wondering about the cultural positions of those issues in Canada compared to US).
What is "cultural genocide"?
It's the destruction or eradication of a particular culture, usually a minority culture relative to the majority. See: Uighur Muslims in China, Ukrainians in Russian-occupied Donbas, Palestinians in Israel, Indigenous Tribes and First Nations in NA ("Save the man, kill the Indian")...
Some of those also involve more overtly violent genocides as well as cultural genocide, but yeah, it's trying to eradicate a culture, usually through forced assimilation to the majority.
Good point - I thought about including Jewish people in there, but then you get into the messy gray area of "isn't this just regular old genocide?" Typically, cultural genocide tries to keep the people alive, and focuses more on "re-education", but in most of my examples, a lot of people were also killed.
Ok thanks for explaining. The word genocide seemed very intense.
It's because having your culture forcefully stripped from you is intense.
I must be misunderstanding something here. Or am extraordinarily ignorant about it.
Here is an example from Canada. For decades the Canadian government was taking Indigenous people's children from their parents to "teach them" in government schools away from their parents (in order to destroy their culture). They were generally not attempting to eradicate them (tho lots and lots of them died), just eradicate their indigenous identity.
The Canadian government (or various provincial governments) have done similar (but significantly less extreme) things to french speaking citizens in Canada. For example (and they won't teach you this in anglophone schools), they made it illegal to teach students in french in Ontario in the 1910s and 1920s. This led to many francophones losing their culture and heritage by being assimilated.
Other good examples are Australia and NZ, where children were taken from their parents and English would be literally beaten into them, with the idea of producing brown Englishmen. You're not killing the kid, but you're trying to kill the indigenous identity, and the easiest way to do that is to kill the language (by taking children from their parents by force).
I mean, the flight that crashed was from Montreal, and that means probably a decent portion of the passengers (along with, according to this article, one of the deceased pilots) on that flight were Francophone (and thus, so are their families). According to this article, Air Canada itself is also based in Quebec. Even without a particularly deep understanding of Canadian politics when it comes to bilingualism and Francophone Canada, it seems pretty obvious that not offering even a token effort to use French in a speech offering condolences to the victims of that crash and their families is a little tasteless. You're putting the burden of dealing with a second language on the bereaved family members, rather than taking even the effort to have someone translate the statement and deliver it in spoken French. I highly doubt there would be similar controversy if he delivered a French speech with some imperfect pronunciation or minor mistakes.
This obviously is going to be even worse PR-wise when you (the CEO of Air Canada) have already been criticized for refusing to learn French. And he's a CEO, so doing shit like this and not making it reflect badly on the company is a pretty big part of his job, no? Making bad PR moves is a reasonable thing for there to be negative consequences for a CEO.
I think someone with a deeper understanding could explain more about the politics of language in Canada, and in this case the inequality in who is expected to be bilingual (would Air Canada ever have had a CEO who spoke only French and not English? I doubt it) but I'm not even Canadian much less Francophone, so I can't go much deeper than my surface-take, which is that it seems kinda obvious to also use the local language in at least a token fashion for a statement like this, especially for what was definitely a pre-written prepared statement that can easily be translated for you in advance, and especially on such an emotional topic.
Not a citizen, but long-term resident: Canada has two official national languages (plus recognized territorial languages for First Nations), and it's federal law that any federal guidance needs to be provided in both national languages. Items at the grocery store or pharmacy have labels printed in both languages. Emails from the government and many companies are written in both languages. Debates for Prime Minister are held in English and French (leading to much speculation about how badly some candidates will speak French).
Provinces vary a lot based on how much French they speak, where there's very few speakers in western Canada, quite a lot further east (especially in New Brunswick and Ontario), and Québec is the hub of French language protection, requiring that immigrants have proficiency in French and street signs etc must be in French. School districts are divided into being anglophone or Francophone, and universities have dominant languages. It's a big deal, and a huge part of life on Canada, and a major tension point for politics, because...
Most Canadians don't speak French. To work for the federal government, you need to pass a proficiency test in both languages, but passing the French portion doesn't necessarily mean you're sufficiently proficient to be able to help a Francophone caller with their problems, and that's a very frequent complaint from francophones (and they're right). French in Canada also has strong dialects, where Québécois sounds very different from Chiac in New Brunswick, and both sound quite different from Parisian French (which is what many Canadian schools and the military teach, for some bizarre reason). Many anglophone students also undergo French immersion, where they take French classes taught by Francophone teachers in an anglophone school, but this is different from attending a Francophone school. English is often treated as the "default" language, and despite Quebec's laws to protect French, the use of French has declined over time there, leading to concerns for francophones and support for them, especially considering their issues already in getting sufficient help in French. These concerns are so strong that one of the biggest political parties in Quebec is the Bloc Québécois, which exists pretty much entirely to advocate for Quebec alone and Francophone rights in particular, much to the irritation of most other provinces (which seems needlessly self involved, from their perspective).
Also: Air Canada is by far the biggest airline in Canada, and because Canada has so few people and is so enormous in terms of land area, most people are going to be stuck using Air Canada at some point (especially because there are so few other airline options - it's very different from the USA).
Now: take the above comment and contextualize that with everything I just wrote. This is yet another example of anglophones thinking they don't need to speak French, and it's even more egregious given that the flight originated from Montreal and Air Canada is such an important company, used by most Canadians. You might expect this from someone in Alberta, but you really can't be the CEO of the biggest Canadian airline and not expect to get pushback!
"He delivered his condolence video message in English, with French subtitles," according to the article. I get that it's not the same thing as just speaking French, and also that this is a cultural sensitivity issue that I'm far removed from (but lots of Canadians take seriously). Just pointing out that he did offer (arguably more than) a token effort. Assuming the translation was sound, that doesn't strike me as remotely unreasonable — I'm not sure if I've ever seen a CEO or politician deliver a speech with even that basic affordance. But again, it seems silly to me because I'm not in that world, and I'm really unqualified to talk about it.
Offering French subtitles does not meet the threshold for a token effort to speak French in a bilingual country from the CEO of a company based in a Francophone province when addressing a group of bereaved Francophones. You'd hear more spoken French over the airline intercom on one of Air Canada's flights from Montreal.
Despite years of French in school and Duolingo (I know), I don't speak French with any proficiency.
You better believe if I had to speak to grieving families I'd have practiced a statement for hours. That's ignoring the "being a CEO and being able to afford legitimate immersion education" thing. He didn't even try, and that's just insulting.
To support with an example: When Richard Feynman was visiting a university in Brasil to give a talk (and granted, he'd been visiting regularly for a few years by that point, so he had some basic Portuguese but none for scientific terminology) he practised his speech for days with assistants making sure he got the pronunciation right. Then he attended and heard the lecturers before him all delivering theirs in English, so, embarrassed, he got up, went to the lectern, and apologised for speaking Portuguese as it was what he'd prepared the speech in.
(https://southerncrossreview.org/81/feynman-brazil.html)
Now granted a CEO does have more matters to attend to than spend days on a single statement, and it's not like he could have planned for this to happen, but he could have got someone to write, like, a couple of sentences at the end of the subtitled statement for him to memorise. He could have even done a few takes and dubbed in the one that had the fewest mistakes. Something.
Respecting that you mention you're not in that world (which I might take to mean Canada generally?), so just providing a little context (though, as an anglo). In the Canadian context generally, no, subtitles aren't a token effort. Even less so in a Quebec context, where it might literally have been a legal requirement to have the french subtitles (there are laws that require French language availability).
As understanding as I am that learning a language as an adult can be difficult (hell, my own french is mediocre), he took on a high-responsibility job with a certain requirement that he'd already been called out on and failed to uphold a promise to improve. He has all the resources available to him and lives in a bilingual city. This shows a lack of respect. Add on to that the emotional facet that one of his francophone workers died only heightens that sentiment.
(Edit - sorry, didn't mean to dogpile. I was slowly writing my message while someone else replied!)
Curious for the same reason. Perhaps there is more to it and this is more an excuse to oust a CEO, but two pilots died due to a tragic accident caused by an overworked air traffic controller as a result of the United States' continued downward spiral and this guy is losing his job because he didn't fumble through a condolences video shot in a language he does not speak?
A video with french subtitles, no less!
Right, I agree. This was the CEO’s initial response:
And I’ve got to say, I find that pretty reasonable… which is why I’m hoping a quebecois can step in and share an alternative perspective. I have some familiarity with how militant Quebec is about the use of French, but I’ve never really understood why.
Imagine English isn't your language, and the English have had a history of violently "expelling" your ancestors from nearby areas (that's what the Cajuns of Louisiana are: displaced Acadians from parts of what is now Maine) and trying to eradicate the language you speak.
Quebec is the largest safe haven of the French language in Canada, and legally requires its use in many cases. Like signage around Montreal will be bilingual. Statements from an airline flying out of Quebec kind of fit.
I grew up in Maine, and have literally met Franco-Americans under 60 who said that their parents specifically didn't want them to learn French so they wouldn't be discriminated against. (Under a century ago, schools even used corporal punishment on students for speaking it.)
Because French is one of the two national languages, but the federal government does very little to protect the rights of French speakers, who do exist outside of Québec. Québec worked to do what the federal government wouldn't, and while they may come off as militant to anglophones, in many ways, they are the ones who are working hardest to make sure that the rights of francophones are recognized. The disconnect may be that you are not familiar with what it's like to live in a country with national languages, and unequal enforcement of language rights (apologies if I'm incorrect).
If you don't mind me saying, you guys seem fairly unique in that french-speaking Canadians often don't learn English whereas in Europe most citizens tend to learn multiple national languages. Basically all Catalans speak Spanish, for example. Begrudgingly, perhaps, but speak it nonetheless.
I think it's that aspect that I don't really understand.
I'm not sure where you got the impression that french-speaking Canadians do not speak english as well. Nearly a majority of all québécois people can hold a conversation in english, and I am sure that the rates are even higher for francophones outside of the province.
The same can certainly not be said of the english speaking side, considering the bilingualism rate across the country, according to the last census data, is at 18%, and Quebec accounts for 23 % of the total Canadian population.
There's a longstanding joke in Quebec that describes Canadian bilingualism as "The french speak english, and the english also speak english."!
Phrased differently, that's less than half. To return to my catalan example, the rate is 97% speak Spanish and 99% understand it.
Perhaps there are good reasons for this, and there are analogues: well under half of walloon belgians also speak Flemish. But nonetheless it is not crazy to suggest that quebecois do not often learn English: in fact statistically that is correct in a literal sense.
I am neither Francophone nor Canadian :) but I lived in Canada long enough and have enough family there to know a bit about language dynamics. One thing to consider is that many neighborhoods and even regions are highly segregated, where they really either speak one or the other, and while you may learn the other in school, no one in your community regularly speaks it and so you may get rusty. It's actually a major issue with French immersion, where you may learn French technical terms as an anglophone for more than a decade, attend an anglophone university, and then feel completely lost because you don't know the terminology in English! I know quite a few people who had this issue.
It is weird, and I'm guessing it's a historical artifact from colonialism? The Acadians and the French had their colonies, the English had their colonies, and many of those historical language divisions are still present after a couple hundred years. While they are meant to be equal in status, in reality they aren't. I think another thing frustrating for Francophones is that they do try to learn English (because so many anglophones come to their communities), but many anglophones don't bother to learn French, or speak it exceedingly poorly, and that also causes the francophones anger, which then makes Québec, for example, take a very ungracious stance on English (to reflect how they feel about anglophones, and in particular Canadian anglophones).
You don't want to know how First Nations are treated, and how many (any?) people in Ottawa speak Inuktitut (one of the territorial languages of Nunavut).
To agree with you here: I think Americans may not realize that, perhaps because they don't have an official national language, the US, and particularly the US government, is often quite a bit more accommodating of other languages than many countries, and that in turn may make people less offended by cases like these, or less likely see them as part of a wider discrimination against their language or promotion of another. That's likely even more the case when compared to countries that, as you point out, say they have multiple national languages, sometimes quite vocally, but in practice treat them very unequally.
All those government forms available in multiple languages in the US, for example? In many countries, including many progressive European ones, they often don't exist. Sometimes, they don't exist in languages that are legally official, and that they are supposedly required to exist in. The ability to deal with the government in other languages? Yes, it's not always available or great in the US, but in other countries, it may be legally prohibited. Can you refer to a government agency by its official name, in a nominally officially language, in a professional context, and not be laughed out of the room and told to refer to it by its name in the right language? That's not guaranteed.
I wonder how the counterfactual would have been received - if he did try to do the speech in French, and butchered it because he’s not a fluent speaker.
I’ve only been to Montreal three times, but in my experience, while almost everyone in the world appreciates when foreigners try to learn their language, the French are an exception - that you defile their beautiful language with your disgusting foreign accent is an affront to their existence.
I haven’t been to French Canada, but my experience in France proper is the exact opposite. I found the French to be incredibly nice as long as you seem to be trying to speak their language, and happy to fall back to English if they speak it (which the vast majority in France do not).
When I was last there it was 50/50 no reaction 50/50 weirdly offended. Their faces would drop and they would aggressively asset that they can speak English or that I’m saying it wrong. I’m not talking sentences here, more like hello, thank you, this one, etc. Usual tourist fare.
Maybe it’s because I’m not white, idk.
That's entirely possible. My experiences have been almost universally positive through my many trips there. My only issues have been one total dick who perfectly fit the stereotype (probably more intense than the stereotype) and one lady in my very first day there who didn't really seem to know how to pronounce French, so I'm not sure what her deal was (she understand neither my order for un chocolat nor a "hot chocolate" and eventually said "oh! Choh-coh-late!").
My experience matches yours as well. I visited France with family around 8 years ago now and the people there were kind and accommodating to us tourists, falling back to English once my super limited French knowledge was exhausted. French Canada was a wildly different beast however. I visited Montreal and Quebec City last year and the only time I heard English being spoken was either from my family members or the tour guide that took us around Quebec City. When I'd go to Tim Hortons for a morning coffee, they'd only speak French and I had to translate my requests into French using my phone. They'd just stare at me blankly if I spoke English or even tried to speak the French phrases from my phone.
Beautiful place to visit though, highly recommend.
Same. I heard all these stories, but I had no bad experiences if I legitimately tried to use the native language. This has been my experience in every single country I've ever been to.
Everyone has good and bad days - I must have caught everyone I met in Quebec (during a brief visit in and around Quebec City last Autumn) on a good day, as my atrocious french was met with an abundance of patience every time I tried.
Further, it's hard to blame them being defensive. Culture is hard to change, but good luck recovering it if it's lost. We have enough influence from the States that I fully support the Canadian content rules. There's a marked difference between Canadians and Americans, and I appreciate the re-enforcement from media regarding language, social norms, and culture in general. I'd imagine the Quebecois would feel similarly.
I meant the French in France. I was only in Quebec for business so I just spoke English and that seemed fine, although I didn’t have to speak to that many people.
You might get that attitude in Paris, where I'm told people can be uniquely rude, but when I've gone to Southern France I've had the exact opposite experience with the locals. Everyone was incredibly friendly and super accommodating of my non-existent French (I tried to lead with greeting in French but I mostly did a lot of pointing lol). But also most of the people I encountered didn't speak English either, so maybe that was a factor.
When I visited Montreal myself, I had no problem with just speaking English, but I suspect this was because of just how touristy the venues were lol, since it was part of a work meet-up.
Since taking over as CEO in 2021 Air Canada stock has lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 30% of its value. I'd be stunned if that didn't have at least something to do with this decision. But I too am curious to hear what a local has to say.
I think the easiest way to see why there is offence would be to picture something similar:
The CEO of Ford makes a video expressing condolences for something that happens in America. In the video, he speaks only Spanish, with English subtitles. Then later he admits that he doesn't speak English. There would be a lot of questions that people would have, like "why doesn't the face of this company speak the language of the country?"
This is almost exactly the same, it's just that in this case, the CEO speaks the same language as all of us here.
Not Francophone Canadian, but living in Acadian Canada. The hurt feelings are a present tense here.
For folks wondering who cares, maybe think of it as not using inclusive pronouns if one of the pilots was non-binary, or referring to the pilots with a dead name, or sending pork gift baskets to the grieving families. Bilingualism isn't our fight, but it is still a hurtful, currently threatening one to many. What's at stake is cultural genocide within living memory.
Even our new prime minister got roasted pretty hard for not speaking good enough French. Point being: it's easy for outsiders to say "this is just x who cares" when you don't see the history of open wounds.
I'm pretty impressed at how much better Carney has gotten in french. It's clear he's making an effort!
:) he improved so much I could even tell, and that's saying a lot based on how slowly and terribly I'm learning French.
Another example, Carney's Japanese was fairly atrocious but the attitude and effort showed: as a guest just having a fun visit, he spoke more of his host's language than this CEO did during a major tragedy for his Montreal based company. And it's not Carney's job to speak Japanese, whereas it was literally this guy's job to learn some French. He couldn't even work Air Canada call center or airport desk or flight attendants with this.
Actors hire accent coaches. This guy was paid a ton of money to do what, exactly, for Canadians, for shareholders and... In this instance, getting a coach to drill you overnight for a couple sentences is not that hard. Wear an ear piece, have words be fed to you one at a time.