![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2154742677.jpg?w=2048\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Bonjour. After five years as CEO of Air Canada, Michael Rousseau announced his retirement from the Montreal-based airline yesterday after being pilloried for speaking almost no French in a video statement about last week\u2019s deadly crash at LaGuardia Airport. The mind boggles: Did Rousseau not know how to say something other than \u201chello\u201d and \u201cthank you\u201d in both of Canada\u2019s two official languages? Were others unaware? What\u2019s clear is that this backlash is about more than linguistic ability. Some takeaways:<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t even try. If ever there\u2019s a time to add a few French sentences to the teleprompter, it\u2019s when discussing the tragic death of a francophone employee, pilot Antoine Forest. (Pilot Mackenzie Gunther of Ontario also died.) And Rousseau had promised to learn French back in 2021 after facing a similar backlash. Five years and 300 hours of language classes later, this was the best he could do? No wonder critics questioned his empathy, commitment and, frankly, his ability to learn. As one CEO put it: \u201cHe brought this on himself.\u201d<\/p>\n
French is the official language of Quebec. My dad wanted to live in Montreal when we left Scotland, but the province\u2019s French language laws prompted him to set up his business in Ontario. That said, he had immense respect for how those laws had enabled Quebec to preserve its unique language and culture. Preserving Quebec\u2019s francophone identity is still nonnegotiable. Look at Bill 96, a recent law requiring any company with 25 or more employees to certify French as the primary workplace language. Some CEOs complain that it adds costs and undermines their ability to recruit talent. Trump tried to target it in trade talks, to no avail. If multinationals have to adapt, why is Air Canada\u2019s CEO exempt from speaking French?<\/p>\n
Where\u2019s the board? Every CEO becomes the company\u2019s chief communicator in a crisis, and running an airline involves lots of public speaking for plenty of reasons. In 2021, the board could see that Rousseau\u2019s cavalier attitude toward the French language was a problem. It was their job to spot the red flags and make sure he fixed the issue. If they knew Rousseau still couldn\u2019t advance beyond \u201cAllez!\u201d after 300 hours of training, it should have taken action sooner and prevented the very public embarrassment. As my colleague Phil Wahba notes, a leader\u2019s inability\u2014or perhaps even unwillingness\u2014to learn what\u2019s needed to do the job is just bad business.<\/p>\n
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com<\/p>\n
Top leadership news<\/p>\n
Ken Griffin\u2019s $2.5 billion bet on Miami<\/p>\n
Fortune’s Shawn Tully got the inside scoop on Citadel CEO Ken Griffin’s $2.5 billion bet that Miami is the low-tax, pro-business site of future American enterprise. He\u2019s also one of the biggest donors to Republican policies but is breaking with President Trump on issues like tariffs and immigration.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Powell warns college students about debt\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fed Chair Jerome Powell told an economics class at Harvard on Monday that the current U.S. debt load is \u201cnot sustainable\u201d and warned that the situation \u201cwill not end well if we don\u2019t do something fairly soon.\u201d His suggested fix isn\u2019t paying the debt off outright, but instead ensuring that the economy grows faster than the amount the U.S. owes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hadrian CEO says kids should enter the trades<\/p>\n
Hadrian CEO Chris Power recently predicted that \u201cwe\u2019re going to see massive hyperinflation in blue-collar salaries\u201d as white-collar roles are replaced by technology. Power, whose company seeks to automate factory work, advises parents to direct their kids to welding certificates rather than college degrees.<\/p>\n
The markets<\/p>\n
S&P 500 futures are up 0.83% this morning. The last session closed down 0.39%. The STOXX Europe 600 was up 0.60% in early trading. The U.K.\u2019s FTSE 100 was up 0.72% in early trading. Japan\u2019s Nikkei 225 was down 1.58%. China\u2019s CSI 300 was down 0.93%. Hong Kong\u2019s Hang Seng was up 0.15%. South Korea\u2019s KOSPI was down 4.26%. India\u2019s markets are closed today. Bitcoin was down to $67K.<\/p>\n
Around the watercooler<\/p>\n
Cargo theft costs U.S. trucking $18 million a day and is \u2018unlike anything our industry has faced before,\u2019 logistics exec warns by Jason Ma<\/p>\n
Bill Ackman told spooked investors to get over the Iran war and buy Fannie and Freddie. The stocks surged 40% the next day by Eva Roytburg<\/p>\n
Wealth taxes on billionaires and $30 minimum wages are part of the same plan, advocate says. \u2018They should pay their fair share\u2019 by Catherina Gioino<\/p>\n
Hyperscalers often lack the \u2018aptitude\u2019 on power as the political push picks up to expedite grid connections and pipelines by Jordan Blum<\/p>\n
Elon Musk is escalating his feud with a Delaware judge over a \u2018heart\u2019 on a LinkedIn post by Jacqueline Munis<\/p>\n
CEO Daily is curated and edited by Joey Abrams, Claire Zillman and Lee Clifford.<\/p>\n
#Ousted #Air #Canada #CEO #failed #speak #Frenchand #forgot #basics #crisis #leadership<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bonjour. After five years as CEO of Air Canada, Michael Rousseau announced his retirement from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[245],"tags":[3169,6445,3342,585,1277,1243,1985,6444,6443,1680,6441,6442],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2770"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2770\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}