Stéphanie11h ago

Air Canada is subject to the Official Languages Act.

Air Canada's CEO has lived in Montréal for 20 years.

Air Canada's CEO promised to learn French 5 years ago.

Air Canada's CEO makes over 10 millions CAD every year.

Air Canada's linguistic plan says: "We also promote and advocate for the use of English and French in the workplace.
Our organization has language obligations, and supporting our efforts to be accountable to and meet these obligations are our employees who seize language training opportunities. Air Canada has developed and continues to grow a robust repository of resources and tools to champion language learning for our employees."

Show threadanyGould11h ago
@stephanie Counterpoint - do we really expect him to repeat every sentence he says, every day of the year? Are we not just training these execs to *not* put a personal touch on things and just let the PR department spit out a standard statement duly translated?
Show threadStéphanie11h ago

@anyGould Giving a message to the family and community of a dead pilot vs repeating every single sentence he ever says.

Come on.

Show threadanyGould11h ago
@stephanie I'd be more pissed if the family message is a public statement and not an actual phone call. But the point stands - we really expect him to repeat himself? We don't expect the PM or MPs to do that.
Show threadStéphanie11h ago
@anyGould What are you even talking about. The PM and MPs do it *every day*. Or they alternate between both in a speech.
Show threadanyGould11h ago
@stephanie Alternate isn't what they're calling for here though, is it? They wanted him to say the whole thing twice. (And being from Alberta, I promise you most of those CPC MPs stopped taking French in grade 6. :/ )
Show threadStéphanie11h ago
@anyGould That's a lie, that's not what was asked of him
Show threadanyGould11h ago
@stephanie That's what I'm reading from the CBC reporting. Why aren't we focusing on "are the families of these pilots going to be taken care of properly" or "why do we still fly to the US when they basically don't have ATC anymore?", instead of "he only said two words in French". But I'll throw the question to you - how do you think he should have done it? How much English is "too much"?
Show threadStéphanie11h ago

@anyGould I've read dozens of articles. None of them say that he should have said everything in both languages.

A whole sentence in French? That would have been respectful.

Also we can have more than one debate at the same time.

Show threadRenata 🇨🇦🐈

@stephanie @anyGould I work for a certain Canadian company and the internal CEO communication is always bilingual. It doesn’t seem to be a challenge or big deal. I receive bilingual communications every single day.

It’s really bizarre to me that Air Canada couldn’t bother to do ONE bilingual statement.

E ninguém fala Português mesmo então pra mim nem faz diferença.

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