Janet Jalil

The head of Canada's national airline, Air Canada, is facing calls to resign after issuing a condolence message only in English and not in French following a crash at a major US airport that killed two pilots.

Carla Conti reports.

On Sunday night, as an Air Canada plane was landing at New York's LaGuardia airport, travelling at more than 200 kilometres an hour, a fire truck crossed at an intersection on the runway.

The plane hit the truck.

Both pilots were killed.

While some of the passengers and crew were injured, they all survived.

Tributes have poured in for the two men, Mackenzie Gunther and Antoine Forrest.

Shortly after the accident, Air Canada's Michael Rousseau released a video of condolence on X, but only in one of Canada's two official languages, English, despite the fact that one of the two men who died, Antoine Forrest, was from French-speaking Quebec.

This has outraged many in a country where more than one in five people speak French.

Canada's Parliamentary Committee on Official Languages summoned the airline boss to explain himself before MPs.

And the Prime Minister Mark Carney has waded into the row, saying Mr Rousseau's response showed a lack of compassion and calling on him to step down.

Mr Rousseau lives in Montreal, but despite his name, is an Anglophone.

It's not the first time he's been criticised for his lack of French.

When he was appointed as CEO of Air Canada in 2021, a journalist asked him why he hadn't learned the language, despite living in Quebec for more than a decade.

His response, that he didn't have the time, sparked outrage.

He later apologised and promised to learn French.

Mr Rousseau is until 1 May to appear before the committee.

Amid concerns that safety failures may have been to blame for the accident, the row has sparked a fresh debate about linguistic inclusivity in Canada.

Carla Conti

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