Big red in trouble for no French again

[rigpiggy]

Some officious twit in Quebec was complaining because the first class charm school couldn't talk to her in french. Didn't we deal with this in 2014 thibodeau vs Air Canada?( The DND employee who filed multiple suits)

I haven't been able to find the article but it came across the wife fb feed this pm.

[porcsord]

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/air-c ... 00142.html

[cdnavater]

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/air-c ... 00142.html

I suppose they could have offered him a seat in the back, I believe the way it works is business class is the purser’s job which pays more, this idiot wanted her/him to make less money because she doesn’t speak French. Even though he speaks English, it’s ridiculous that he even has a format to tell this story!

[Crewbunk]

The way the flight attendant crew works on a narrow body, the Service Director must work the forward cabin. Drills, procedures, equipment, communication and training are all predicated on that position in the aircraft.

As the gentleman boarded the aircraft with an agenda already in place, he must have been overjoyed at encountering an Anglophone Service Director. It’s an odd mentality.

It’s like the couple in 2019 who were so offended that it was marked “LIFT” on the seat belt buckle, and not blank like most.

[cdnavater]

The way the flight attendant crew works on a narrow body, the Service Director must work the forward cabin. Drills, procedures, equipment, communication and training are all predicated on that position in the aircraft.

As the gentleman boarded the aircraft with an agenda already in place, he must have been overjoyed at encountering an Anglophone Service Director. It’s an odd mentality.

It’s like the couple in 2019 who were so offended that it was marked “LIFT” on the seat belt buckle, and not blank like most.

It’s absurd that the official language act is even a thing, can’t people “preserve” their language without inflicting harm on private companies, not to mention no other airline has to abide by it. It’s purpose is far overreaching and should be abolished.

[yowflyer23]

To be fair, it was a flight leaving from YQB… you’d expect that crew sched or whomever is responsible would assign a bilingual crew on the flight if available. It would be weird departing from YYC and having a French speaking crew.

[cdnavater]

To be fair, it was a flight leaving from YQB… you’d expect that crew sched or whomever is responsible would assign a bilingual crew on the flight if available. It would be weird departing from YYC and having a French speaking crew.

To be fair, the other two flight attendants spoke French, should a national company only hire bilingual FAs, makes the pool of applicants fairly small, n'est-ce pas?
To your comment on YYC, there are French routes out of most airports in Canada in which both Jazz and AC attempt to ensure a French speaking FA on those flights, the exception being a reserve call out.
There are FAs who were hired before the act, tons of money is spent on trying to teach them French, some people do not have the ability to learn another language, I personally know several in YYC who fail time after time, yet are forced to attend French lessons, it’s pretty demoralizing to them and it ridiculous that it happens!

[RoAF-Mig21]

It’s absurd that the official language act is even a thing, can’t people “preserve” their language without inflicting harm on private companies, not to mention no other airline has to abide by it. It’s purpose is far overreaching and should be abolished.

Edit: this reply is in regards with presserservation of one's language, not the policy of Canada or a Canadian corporation.

Yes and no. I will speak my native language until I die. I was born overseas and English has and will always be my second language. My wife and I try to speak with our child in our native language but our girl ends up replying back in English. Depending on who she marries, the chance of my grandchildren speaking my language is very slim and my great grandkids, essentially zero.

I understand why Quebec is so afraid to lose its language and culture in a world where we're all digitally connected, and English is the predominant language. What I don't agree with is the way they're doing it. My personal opinion is that all Canadians should speak English and French fluently, whether you're in Roberval QB or For McMurray, AB.

For someone that has briefly lived in Scandinavia, I was very impressed that most kids spoke at least two languages, sometimes three. In Sweden for example, the majority of its population is fluent in English.

[DanWEC]

And he was going to Lauderdale! HA! There's virtually no other way to interpret this other than this guy is a waste of oxygen.

[fish4life]

It’s absurd that the official language act is even a thing, can’t people “preserve” their language without inflicting harm on private companies, not to mention no other airline has to abide by it. It’s purpose is far overreaching and should be abolished.

Edit: this reply is in regards with presserservation of one's language, not the policy of Canada or a Canadian corporation.

Yes and no. I will speak my native language until I die. I was born overseas and English has and will always be my second language. My wife and I try to speak with our child in our native language but our girl ends up replying back in English. Depending on who she marries, the chance of my grandchildren speaking my language is very slim and my great grandkids, essentially zero.

I understand why Quebec is so afraid to lose its language and culture in a world where we're all digitally connected, and English is the predominant language. What I don't agree with is the way they're doing it. My personal opinion is that all Canadians should speak English and French fluently, whether you're in Roberval QB or For McMurray, AB.

For someone that has briefly lived in Scandinavia, I was very impressed that most kids spoke at least two languages, sometimes three. In Sweden for example, the majority of its population is fluent in English.

While learning French would be nice the worldwide language is English and in your example the Swedish school system puts great emphasis on learning English because they realize how important it is which is why all the Swedish hockey players are among the most fluent of the European ones and sometimes better than some of the Canadian players.

I’d honestly have a lot more use for Spanish than I ever would for French and I bet that’s the case for most people that live west of Ottawa with more trips south than to Quebec

[RoAF-Mig21]

While learning French would be nice the worldwide language is English and in your example the Swedish school system puts great emphasis on learning English because they realize how important it is which is why all the Swedish hockey players are among the most fluent of the European ones and sometimes better than some of the Canadian players.

I’d honestly have a lot more use for Spanish than I ever would for French and I bet that’s the case for most people that live west of Ottawa with more trips south than to Quebec

You're not wrong about Spanish being more widely spoken than French, especially now that it has virtually become USA's unofficial 2nd language. Of course we have to mention the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America and South America. The Scandinavians have an advantage because their language structure is close to English (Norwegians, Swedes and Danes), but even Finns, who's language is nothing like English, are fluent speakers although not in as big of a percentage as the other three mentioned, but you are correct. Their school systems understands the value of learning and speaking the most spoken language in the world.

I was in France last year and ended up in a small village in Brittany (ironic because of the name) and wanted to find a store that sold sim cards. I asked, in my poor French, a group of high school kids if they spoke English. None of them said YES. These are high-school kids that are 24/7 on the internet, social media etc. I was shocked.

If you go to Eastern Europe, such as Croatia, Hungary, Czechia, Romania, etc. the majority of high-schoolers are fluent in English. I don't understand why the French as so resistant to that. Germans used to be bad, but I find myself speaking English everywhere in Germany, while in France, I have to struggle in my horrible French. (and I say that as a non native English speaker).

I partly blame the fact that growing up in France, every movie and TV show is dubbed in French, while growing up in Eastern Europe, it was the original English audio with subtitles. So while we read in our native language we also listened to them in English and were able to learn it. Most kids learned English from watching Cartoon Network. The exposure to English is much greater. I believe that's by design.

English is the international language, whether people like it or not. It could have been French, German, Mandarin or Hindi, but history decided that English would be it. That's just the way it is. I mean look at us when we're flying to France, Austria, Japan or Argentina. We speak English with ATC.

Here's a quick list of the most spoken languages in the world (after a quick Google search):

English – 1,121 million speakers. ...
Mandarin Chinese – 1,107 million speakers. ...
Hindi – 698 million speakers. ...
Spanish – 512 million speakers. ...
French – 284 million speakers. ...
Arabic – 273 million speakers. ...

[cdnavater]

It’s absurd that the official language act is even a thing, can’t people “preserve” their language without inflicting harm on private companies, not to mention no other airline has to abide by it. It’s purpose is far overreaching and should be abolished.

Edit: this reply is in regards with presserservation of one's language, not the policy of Canada or a Canadian corporation.

Yes and no. I will speak my native language until I die. I was born overseas and English has and will always be my second language. My wife and I try to speak with our child in our native language but our girl ends up replying back in English. Depending on who she marries, the chance of my grandchildren speaking my language is very slim and my great grandkids, essentially zero.

I understand why Quebec is so afraid to lose its language and culture in a world where we're all digitally connected, and English is the predominant language. What I don't agree with is the way they're doing it. My personal opinion is that all Canadians should speak English and French fluently, whether you're in Roberval QB or For McMurray, AB.

For someone that has briefly lived in Scandinavia, I was very impressed that most kids spoke at least two languages, sometimes three. In Sweden for example, the majority of its population is fluent in English.

The government could make it easier to learn French in school instead of forcing it on people later in life.
I grew up French, I was in French school for the first five grades, then we moved across town where there was only English schools, with 1 hour of French class per day, they did not invest in programs and made it impossible for me to continue learning in French. We were no where near our family and back then it cost a fortune to call long distance, needless to say as the years went on my French got worse and worse to the point where Francophones would not believe I am French.
Why can’t a French program with 1 hour of English per day be in every school, why the need for French immersion schools and only sporadically placed?

[digits_]

It’s absurd that the official language act is even a thing, can’t people “preserve” their language without inflicting harm on private companies, not to mention no other airline has to abide by it. It’s purpose is far overreaching and should be abolished.

Edit: this reply is in regards with presserservation of one's language, not the policy of Canada or a Canadian corporation.

Yes and no. I will speak my native language until I die. I was born overseas and English has and will always be my second language. My wife and I try to speak with our child in our native language but our girl ends up replying back in English. Depending on who she marries, the chance of my grandchildren speaking my language is very slim and my great grandkids, essentially zero.

I understand why Quebec is so afraid to lose its language and culture in a world where we're all digitally connected, and English is the predominant language. What I don't agree with is the way they're doing it. My personal opinion is that all Canadians should speak English and French fluently, whether you're in Roberval QB or For McMurray, AB.

For someone that has briefly lived in Scandinavia, I was very impressed that most kids spoke at least two languages, sometimes three. In Sweden for example, the majority of its population is fluent in English.

The government could make it easier to learn French in school instead of forcing it on people later in life.
I grew up French, I was in French school for the first five grades, then we moved across town where there was only English schools, with 1 hour of French class per day, they did not invest in programs and made it impossible for me to continue learning in French. We were no where near our family and back then it cost a fortune to call long distance, needless to say as the years went on my French got worse and worse to the point where Francophones would not believe I am French.
Why can’t a French program with 1 hour of English per day be in every school, why the need for French immersion schools and only sporadically placed?

Perhaps. But it doesn't matter so much as to when you learn it. If you never use it, or have to use it, then you'll lose the ability to speak it.

If you ask French people if they speak English, they might say no. If you start to speak horrible French to them, they might switch to English.

By emphasizing the political aspect of the usage of French, more resistance is created towards speaking it as well.
The resistance towards speaking English, and creating a French alternative to commonly used English terminology is only possible because it is. France is big enough and has enough influence, for now, to do so. U think that will change in the not so distant future.

That doesn't really change anything for Canada though. Protecting French isn't necessarily a bad thing. Abusing the rules, or encouraging people to abuse it, might be.

[cdnavater]

Edit: this reply is in regards with presserservation of one's language, not the policy of Canada or a Canadian corporation.

Yes and no. I will speak my native language until I die. I was born overseas and English has and will always be my second language. My wife and I try to speak with our child in our native language but our girl ends up replying back in English. Depending on who she marries, the chance of my grandchildren speaking my language is very slim and my great grandkids, essentially zero.

I understand why Quebec is so afraid to lose its language and culture in a world where we're all digitally connected, and English is the predominant language. What I don't agree with is the way they're doing it. My personal opinion is that all Canadians should speak English and French fluently, whether you're in Roberval QB or For McMurray, AB.

For someone that has briefly lived in Scandinavia, I was very impressed that most kids spoke at least two languages, sometimes three. In Sweden for example, the majority of its population is fluent in English.

The government could make it easier to learn French in school instead of forcing it on people later in life.
I grew up French, I was in French school for the first five grades, then we moved across town where there was only English schools, with 1 hour of French class per day, they did not invest in programs and made it impossible for me to continue learning in French. We were no where near our family and back then it cost a fortune to call long distance, needless to say as the years went on my French got worse and worse to the point where Francophones would not believe I am French.
Why can’t a French program with 1 hour of English per day be in every school, why the need for French immersion schools and only sporadically placed?

Perhaps. But it doesn't matter so much as to when you learn it. If you never use it, or have to use it, then you'll lose the ability to speak it.

If you ask French people if they speak English, they might say no. If you start to speak horrible French to them, they might switch to English.

By emphasizing the political aspect of the usage of French, more resistance is created towards speaking it as well.
The resistance towards speaking English, and creating a French alternative to commonly used English terminology is only possible because it is. France is big enough and has enough influence, for now, to do so. U think that will change in the not so distant future.

That doesn't really change anything for Canada though. Protecting French isn't necessarily a bad thing. Abusing the rules, or encouraging people to abuse it, might be.

You are correct that if you don’t use it you lose it, for sure, I’m proof of that, my Mom even more so because she didn’t learn English until grade 8 and now she cannot carry on a conversation in French.
That being said, I don’t care if in Quebec, they want to mandate French but to force a private company to follow rules only applying to them and no other. Would you encounter more flights without a French speaking FA onboard, likely but I would assume AC is smart enough to know that in order to remain a choice for Francophones, it would have to for flights into and out of Quebec.
In this instance what were they supposed to do, according to what I’ve read so far, 2 out of 3 FAs spoke French but the senior one who serves business class was not, should they have brought up one of them to serve this one individual?
I sure hope this doesn’t go anywhere, I also hope AC can ban a passenger who launches ridiculous lawsuits!

[yowflyer23]

To be fair, it was a flight leaving from YQB… you’d expect that crew sched or whomever is responsible would assign a bilingual crew on the flight if available. It would be weird departing from YYC and having a French speaking crew.

To be fair, the other two flight attendants spoke French, should a national company only hire bilingual FAs, makes the pool of applicants fairly small, n'est-ce pas?
To your comment on YYC, there are French routes out of most airports in Canada in which both Jazz and AC attempt to ensure a French speaking FA on those flights, the exception being a reserve call out.
There are FAs who were hired before the act, tons of money is spent on trying to teach them French, some people do not have the ability to learn another language, I personally know several in YYC who fail time after time, yet are forced to attend French lessons, it’s pretty demoralizing to them and it ridiculous that it happens!

I'm not defending the guy. He was clearly looking for trouble. I'm just pointing out that it's surprising to me that they assigned a non-french speaker to the YQB route especially considering the risk of this situation occuring. Not the first time...

[cdnavater]

To be fair, it was a flight leaving from YQB… you’d expect that crew sched or whomever is responsible would assign a bilingual crew on the flight if available. It would be weird departing from YYC and having a French speaking crew.

To be fair, the other two flight attendants spoke French, should a national company only hire bilingual FAs, makes the pool of applicants fairly small, n'est-ce pas?
To your comment on YYC, there are French routes out of most airports in Canada in which both Jazz and AC attempt to ensure a French speaking FA on those flights, the exception being a reserve call out.
There are FAs who were hired before the act, tons of money is spent on trying to teach them French, some people do not have the ability to learn another language, I personally know several in YYC who fail time after time, yet are forced to attend French lessons, it’s pretty demoralizing to them and it ridiculous that it happens!

I'm not defending the guy. He was clearly looking for trouble. I'm just pointing out that it's surprising to me that they assigned a non-french speaker to the YQB route especially considering the risk of this situation occuring. Not the first time...

Given that everything we do is based on seniority, should we ban FAs who don’t speak French from bidding any pairing that has even one leg into or out of Quebec?
The Air Canada act only says must have both official languages on those flights, they did just not for the level of service this passenger was in.
As I said before, the pay for service director is higher and based on seniority, the FA who did not speak French, would be financially punished or schedule limited because of this. Would that be a reverse discrimination situation to prevent a non French from all contractual benefits?

[rigpiggy]

It’s absurd that the official language act is even a thing, can’t people “preserve” their language without inflicting harm on private companies, not to mention no other airline has to abide by it. It’s purpose is far overreaching and should be abolished.

Edit: this reply is in regards with presserservation of one's language, not the policy of Canada or a Canadian corporation.

Yes and no. I will speak my native language until I die. I was born overseas and English has and will always be my second language. My wife and I try to speak with our child in our native language but our girl ends up replying back in English. Depending on who she marries, the chance of my grandchildren speaking my language is very slim and my great grandkids, essentially zero.

I understand why Quebec is so afraid to lose its language and culture in a world where we're all digitally connected, and English is the predominant language. What I don't agree with is the way they're doing it. My personal opinion is that all Canadians should speak English and French fluently, whether you're in Roberval QB or For McMurray, AB.

For someone that has briefly lived in Scandinavia, I was very impressed that most kids spoke at least two languages, sometimes three. In Sweden for example, the majority of its population is fluent in English.

By all means speak your language, but once your here you have to assimilate, the same as if I moved to Romania.

The Air Canada Language Act was brought in by politicians trying to win votes, not business people trying to make a buck.

Would it be nice to speak french, yes. Can I? No, though I used to work at a Montreal company. All emails/forms/manuals in en/fr. I would get 60% from the French and then read the English to fill in the blanks(who knew readings back of cereal boxes was better than 1 hr of French daily.
Does your personal opinion of me matter based upon language fluency? Well opinions are like sphincters everyone has one. You would be better off in Canada speaking Chinese or Hindi considering the number of native language speakers

[RoAF-Mig21]

By all means speak your language, but once your here you have to assimilate, the same as if I moved to Romania.

The Air Canada Language Act was brought in by politicians trying to win votes, not business people trying to make a buck.

Would it be nice to speak french, yes. Can I? No, though I used to work at a Montreal company. All emails/forms/manuals in en/fr. I would get 60% from the French and then read the English to fill in the blanks(who knew readings back of cereal boxes was better than 1 hr of French daily.
Does your personal opinion of me matter based upon language fluency? Well opinions are like sphincters everyone has one. You would be better off in Canada speaking Chinese or Hindi considering the number of native language speakers

You'll get no argument from me. I agree 100% with you. The preservation of my language and my culture is my duty to preserve on my time off. When I came to this country as an immigrant I knew I had to do 3 things:

1. Obey the law
2. Learn the language (English in my case since I was in Ontario)
3. Don't depend on anyone else, such as the government. Work hard and you'll get where you'll get, based on your capabilities (and a bit of luck). My success and failures are directly proportional to my work ethic.

[rigpiggy]

Good On ya. You sound like an Albertan

[RoAF-Mig21]

Good On ya. You sound like an Albertan

I lived there for 7 years... Alberta has and will always be my fav. place in Canada. (Except the Oilers, they can f*ck off... J/K )