Criticized for his level of French, the boss of Air Canada will retire before the end of September

“It’s Rousseau’s fault.” Due to failing to master Voltaire’s language sufficiently well, Air Canada’s CEO, Michael Rousseau, will retire by the end of September, the airline’s board of directors announced Monday.

This announcement follows a controversy surrounding his lack of mastery of the French language. The leader, who has been at the helm of the group for five years, attracted the wrath of several Canadian elected officials over a message of condolence almost exclusively in English after the death of two of his pilots in a collision at LaGuardia airport (New York).

“Canada is a bilingual country,” Anita Anand emphasized in English, then in French, in an interview with AFP, on the occasion of the meeting of G7 foreign ministers, near Paris. “And we continue to advocate that the leaders of our country must be able to speak in both official languages,” she added.

“I apologize”

Prime Minister Mark Carney himself criticized the Air Canada boss, saying he was “very disappointed” and believing that he had “lacked judgment and compassion”. The Prime Minister of Quebec had requested the resignation of the leader.

Michael Rousseau apologized Thursday. “Despite a large number of lessons over the years, I remain unable to express myself adequately in French. I sincerely apologize for this and would like to point out that I am continuing my efforts to improve,” he said in a press release released by the company.

According to Le Journal de Montréal, the search for a successor, launched before this announcement, now explicitly includes the “ability to communicate in French” among the criteria for evaluating candidates.