Canadian Airlines are legally required to provide a certain level of French language service on each flight they operate. Air Canada has repeatedly been the subject of disputes with passengers who claim the carrier didn’t meet this requirement.
Now another passenger who flew Air Canada from Quebec City to Fort Lauderdale is raising the matter again, complaining that he didn’t receive service entirely in French during his Business Class flight as the only french speaking flight attendant worked in Economy Class.
There has been increased confusion throughout the years about what airlines are actually required to do in terms of providing bilingual service, and apparently, even most Canadians don’t exactly know about the details.
Business Insider reported that the passenger got into a heated argument with the crew onboard the flight and was told the Purser of the flight was bilingual and would be working in Economy Class, if he was uncomfortable, then he could disembark and take another flight.
An Air Canada passenger filed a complaint with language authorities after a flight attendant was unable to serve him in French.
Jean-Pierre Beaudoin told the Canadian French-language channel TVA Nouvelles that he was flying in business class last month from Quebec City to Fort Lauderdale, Florida when a flight attendant who only spoke English served him.
He asked for a bilingual flight attendant to serve him so that he could speak in French.
Beaudoin told TVA the crew member spoke to a colleague and then told him “in English, ‘Sir, this is my section. You have the right to leave the plane or I will serve you.'”
He said a man, who was either an Air Canada employee or an airport agent, came on to the plane to tell him that either an English-speaking attendant would serve him, or he would have to leave the aircraft.
Beaudoin said: “It made my blood boil. I was thinking, ‘We’re in Quebec. The flight originates from Quebec.’ It wasn’t a choice for me to leave the plane.”
Beaudoin, who speaks both French and English, told TVA he decided to stay on the plane and only reply in French when crew spoke to him in English. He described the act of rebellion as a “matter of principle.”
He told the outlet he’d filed a complaint with the Quebec Office of the French Language after the flight. Beaudoin said he didn’t complain to Air Canada because he didn’t trust their process, instead escalating the matter to language authorities.
Air Canada is subject to Canada’s Official Languages Act, which gives equal status to both English and French. The airline was fined $15,700 in 2019 after a couple complained that some signs on a domestic flight were only in English, BBC News reported.
In a statement to Insider, an Air Canada representative said two of the three cabin crew on the flight could speak French.
“Therefore, service in the two official languages was available and offered. In this regard, it is false to claim that the only solution was to ask him to leave the aircraft since French-speaking staff members were able and available to serve Mr. Beaudoin in French,” the airline added. …
It’s obvious that the passenger speaks English perfectly well and that it was simply his intention to cause trouble based on his “principle” which I might add is fully within his rights as Canadian courts have affirmed in the past.
The question is, how much of the service has to be provided in French for the airline to fulfill the legal requirement of the Official Languages Act (OLA). Some argue that the airline has to provide at least one staff member on board the flight to be able to communicate with passengers about basic necessities and to ensure the safety briefing and emergency protocol can be handled correctly. Others interpret the law more stringently that a wider service has to be conducted in French as well.
Air Canada has indeed been fined by both the Government for violations or lost cases in front of courts and Human Rights Commissions, awarding passengers damages for violating their rights. This was mostly in cases where Air Canada had no french-english-bilingual cabin crew member on board at all, which is rare, but it does happen.
Official bilingualism is the term used in Canada to collectively describe the policies, constitutional provisions, and laws that ensure legal equality of English and French in the Parliament and courts of Canada, protect the linguistic rights of English- and French-speaking minorities in different provinces, and ensure a level of government services in both languages across Canada.
In addition to the symbolic designation of English and French as official languages, official bilingualism is generally understood to include any law or other measure that:
- mandates that the federal government conduct its business in both official languages and provide government services in both languages;
- encourages or mandates lower tiers of government (most notably the provinces and territories, but also some municipalities) to conduct themselves in both official languages and to provide services in both English and French rather than in just one or the other;
- places obligations on private actors in Canadian society to provide access to goods or services in both official languages (such as the requirement that food products be labelled in both English and French);
- provides support to non-government actors to encourage or promote the use or the status of one or the other of the two official languages. This includes grants and contributions to groups representing the English-speaking minority in Quebec and the French-speaking minorities in the other provinces to assist with the establishment of an infrastructure of cultural supports and services.
A Canadian Senate inquiry in 2022 noted that Air Canada is governed by, among others, the Air Canada Public Participation Act which was enacted in 1985. In 2016, an Order designated the Minister of Transport with the application of this law.
Section 10(1) states that the OLA applies to Air Canada, and section 10(2) states that “the Corporation shall ensure that air services, including incidental services, are provided or made available by a subsidiary of the Corporation, the Corporation has the duty to ensure that any of the subsidiary’s customers can communicate with the subsidiary in respect of those services, and obtain those services from the subsidiary, in either official language”.
Air Canada’s obligations in terms of services to the public fall under Part IV of the OLA and its Official Languages Regulations – Communications with the public and provision of services (Regulations) for which the President of the Treasury Board is responsible. …
In 2017, Air Canada confirmed that it was able to assign bilingual staff to all the flights it operates directly, whether they are on high demand or not. The applicable collective agreement also provides for a minimum number of bilingual employees on all flights, depending on the type of aircraft. This assignment rule gives priority to bilingual employees for obtaining routes, going beyond the seniority rule.
According to Air Canada, the demand for services in the official minority language on many of its routes is well below the five 5% threshold. Air Canada offers services in both official languages on 85 domestic routes and 161 international routes. Those represent 60 % of the air carrier’s routes where services must be bilingual. This proportion compares to 34% of all 11,300 federal offices, under the umbrella of some 200 federal institutions, in Canada and abroad. …
Personally, I wouldn’t trust any excuse Air Canada tells, but this isn’t about my personal feelings toward them. Of course, the number of complaints is always small, and very few people go through the hurdles of filing an official complaint.
This case will likely be decided by another Human Rights Commission or court hearing should the customer pursue it. I’m interested in how the current interpretation of the law would reflect in this case. Air Canada, which was a Crown corporation until the late 1980s, used to be the only airline that must comply with the Official Languages Act.
While many would like to label this passenger as a troublemaker, I think there is more to this. It sounds like he was looking for a reason to get back at Air Canada, and considering the behavior of the carrier in the past 3 years, there is plenty of reason to believe that they have made enough enemies within their group of customers.
Just remember how Air Canada flat out refused to refund people’s money for flights they cancelled and then lobbied the government regulators to agree that “vouchers are totally ok” as reimbursement. Only when Air Canada eventually needed government financial support was a deal struck that required the carrier to finally make customers whole again and provide refunds.
Or the thousands of legitimate complaints about delays and cancellations which would require cash compensation under Canadian law but which are denied in a blanket policy as the carrier knows the CTA is backlogged for years and most passengers won’t sue for their compensation.
You can only treat your passengers badly for so long until such actions backfire and customers go on the offense, trying to look for opportunities to trip you up.
Conclusion
Air Canada is once again accused of running afoul of the Official Languages Act in Canada, requiring them to provide passenger service in both English and French. While there was a bilingual crew member on board this particular passenger’s flight, he was working in Economy Class and not in Business.
The passenger was then presented with the option to disembark the flight and use a later service. The statements of what actually happened differ between the passengers and the airline’s accounts of the situation. Most likely, this will be escalated into an official case where evidence has to be presented, and some authority will decide if Air Canada violated laws and regulations as they have done many times in the past or if having one crew member for the safety briefing and emergency situations on board is sufficient to satisfy OLA requirements.
While this might seem strange to people from countries with only one main language, many countries have several official languages, and there are hardly any problems in daily life. Labels on products are easily assigned, and for official business, an interpreter can be provided if necessary. Companies and the government also prefer to hire bilingual staff to help circumvent problematic situations and, in most cases, pay a premium for such bilingual workers.
The situation in Canada with Quebec is a bit more complicated and goes beyond the language issue as they also have a very own set of laws to be followed and even have their own immigration law that has often been abused throughout the years, using Quebec as a loophole to formally immigrate there but really live in other parts of Canada such as Toronto or Vancouver.