Language Controversy in Air Canada

Introduction

Air Canada, Canada’s aeronautical pride, has experienced some high-profile media conversations in recent weeks regarding its communications and public relations. The choice of language for public conversation by its president and CEO is the cause. The CEO further claimed he has been able to live peacefully in Montreal for over a decade even though he does not speak French and has no intention of learning the language due to his busy schedule¹. Between defensive responses to the media and poorly articulated excuses, there is an intellectual failure of senior management and the practitioners around them to communicate emotionally, culturally, and socially in the public sphere. It is necessary to characterize the institutional communication of the Air Canada organization in view of the error and the attitude of the CEO of the organization regarding their mastery of French and his desire to communicate only in English.

The presentation of the organization is reviewed according to Mintzberg’s typology. Its planning and structure, the management of its communication, and its characterization in terms of institutional communication are analyzed according to Guillemet’s style grid. Finally, an attempt is made to provide a more global view of the communication of the Air Canada organization by putting forward the challenges and issues that this organization is likely to experience, in view of the socio-economic evolution and the political and environmental forecasts.

Company Overview

Air Canada is the largest airline in the country, serving Canadian-American and international air travel to and from Canada. The company’s predecessor was Trans-Canada Airline, formed in 1937, which later became the national airline². To distribute the concentration of passengers, the company uses three main airports, in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, providing the most convenient transportation for customers around the world. The company, in the process of expansion, becomes a national airline representative and in 1964 was renamed Air Canada – in 1989 the company was completely privatized, being completely transferred to the private disposal of the owners³. The company has been headquartered in Montreal since 1949⁴. The company is also the founder of the world’s oldest Star Alliance, which aims to collaborate with the world’s largest airlines.

According to the classification of business structures originally proposed by Mintzberg, each company belongs to one of the types of business organization – among them are entrepreneurial, machine, professional, divisional, and innovative⁵. The complexity and ramifications of the organizational structure of Air Canada do not allow the company to be ranked as a simple entrepreneurial and machine one. Innovative financial policy is also not the main property of a company that is too rooted in modern corporate reality and does not need to constantly develop original creative strategies to survive in the market. However, the company’s activities are still regulated due to changes in the market.

While the responsibility for executing commands rests with each of the secondary managers and employees of the company, Air Canada’s structure can be described as strictly hierarchical. At the same time, the company is not focused on developing a conservative approach and seeks to innovate in order to mature its position in the modern, relatively shaky area of international business. The structure of the company aims to balance the decisions of managers through the critical approach of higher supervisory structures. The company is also forced to respect the interests of its co-owners, which is determined as a result of board meetings of directors, but technically any activity of the company must be reported to the CEO. To summarize, the structure of the company should be characterized as professional due to the focus on professional training of personnel. The company’s management is focused on establishing well-functioning hierarchical relationships that encourage the motivation and hard work of employees. The company can be characterized as professionally structured not branched enough to call its divisional policy, while innovative solutions are only a secondary result of their activities.

Problematic aspects of the company’s activities turn out to be associated with global market transformations caused by the economic shocks of the 21st century. The company has already had to adapt its policies to increase profits since the 2008 financial crisis. At the moment, the threat to the company is the global pandemic lockdown, as a result of which the structure of the company’s activities has been restructured⁶. Air Canada is much more focused on ensuring customer health safety while supporting domestic and foreign tourism. The company even teamed up with the Red Cross to develop a support plan.

Conclusion

While the Air Canada organization is experiencing an unprecedented media outcry due to the fact that its top executive refused to converse with journalists in French following a speech. This controversy created a language insurgency in the Quebec press, accusing the top executive of unilingualism. Subsequently, the CEO of the Air Canada organization stated that he is now taking French courses. This anecdotal situation is socially serious, and highlights deep epistemic problems regarding bilingualism in Quebec, and prompts practitioners in public relations and communications in general to ask themselves fundamental questions about the consideration of Quebec’s linguistic singularity in Canada in general.

The anecdotal fact poses such questions in view of the migration difficulties predicted by various analysts concerning the global ecological situation. The plurality of the use of the main languages spoken by the populations present on the Canadian territory may be a solution to curb unilingualism within the Air Canada organization. It may satisfy the general public and is possible to be implemented in any organization of the entire Canadian national territory.

Bibliography

Air Canada. 2021. “Overview.” Air Canada (website).

Garrow, Laurie, and Virginie Lurkin. 2021. “How COVID-19 is impacting and reshaping the airline industry.” Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management 20: 3–9.

Güner, Halim. 2020. “Professional and bureaucratic decision making behaviors of managers in academic administrators.” Hurrian Education 1(1): 25–41.

Marowits, Ross. 2021. “Air Canada CEO created a PR disaster with comments on his French skills, experts say.” The Canadian Press.

Footnotes

1. Ross Marowits. 2021. “Air Canada CEO created a PR disaster with comments on his French skills, experts say,” The Canadian Press.
2. Air Canada. 2021. “Overview,” Air Canada (website).
3. Air Canada. “Overview.”
4. Ibid.
5. Halim Güner. (2020). “Professional and bureaucratic decision making behaviors of managers in academic administrators,” Hurrian Education 1(1): 25–41.
6. Laurie Garrow, and Virginie Lurkin. 2021. “How COVID-19 is impacting and reshaping the airline industry.” Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management 20: 3–9.