Air Canada’s CEO is stepping down after a very Canadian kind of controversy.
After a March plane crash involving an Air Canada regional plane and a fire truck in New York left two pilots dead, Air Canada’s CEO, Michael Rousseau, recorded a video where he spoke almost entirely in English — opening with “bonjour” and closing with “merci,” but delivering the substance of his condolences in English with French subtitles.
That might sound minor outside Canada, but at home — especially in Quebec, where Air Canada is headquartered and one of the French-speaking pilots, Antoine Forest, was from — it landed as a cultural and political misstep. Mackenzie Gunter, from Ontario, where French is also prominent, was the other pilot who died.
About 80% of people in Quebec are French-speaking as their mother tongue and see the language as central to their identity, shaped, in part, by long-standing tensions with English-speaking Canada since British colonization. English and French are the two official languages of Canada.
Canada’s prime minister called the video “a lack of compassion,” while Quebec Premier François Legault demanded Rousseau’s resignation, and hundreds of complaints from outraged locals poured in.
“We live in a bilingual country, and companies like Air Canada particularly have a responsibility to always communicate in both official languages,” Carney told reporters after the accident.
Rousseau was summoned to the Canadian capital of Ottawa to answer questions about his language choice, where he apologized by saying his inability to speak French “diverted attention” from the victims.
The backlash goes back further than a single video and strikes a long-simmering nerve.
When Rousseau took over as CEO of Air Canada in 2021, he immediately faced criticism for not speaking French fluently, a major issue for a company bound by Canada’s Official Languages Act.
In 2022, Rousseau apologized for giving a business speech in English: “I admit that I made a mistake by not learning to speak French when I joined Air Canada, and I am correcting that mistake at this point,” he said at the time.
The video showed he didn’t live up to that promise.
Still, Rousseau’s exit — officially framed as a retirement coming by late 2026 — comes after nearly two decades at Air Canada. The airline had already been working on a succession plan for the past two years. He took over as CEO during the pandemic and was tasked with getting the airline back on track after travel demand collapsed and carriers lost billions by not flying planes.
Air Canada has since regained its financial footing, reporting strong earnings between 2023 and 2025 as international travel rebounded and premium demand skyrocketed. It projects a profit of more than 3 billion Canadian dollars in 2026.
During his tenure, Air Canada also added several international routes, confirmed an order for new Airbus A321XLRs — a specially designed long-haul plane — in 2022, and teed up a new suite-style business class set to debut later this year.
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