It wasn’t cognac. It wasn’t scotch. It wasn’t champagne. It was lemonade. Yes lemonade. On Wednesday Federal Court Justice Marie-Josée Bédard saw fit to award an Ottawa man $12,000 dollars in damages and a formal apology for the “pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of their vacation” caused by having to order a drink in English rather than his preferred language – French. I say preferred because the complainant is a fluent speaker of both English and French.
Since its privatization in 1988, Air Canada has been forced to continue to operate in both French and English as a subject of the Official Languages Act. In addition Air Canada is required to maintain its head office in Montreal. In my opinion it is patently ridiculous that a private corporation can be held to different standards than its competitors. Wasn’t the whole point of deregulation to move towards market driven corrections and market determination of services? Surely it’s time that these additional burdensome requirements on Air Canada were put to bed?
What’s totally laughable is that this saga centers around an incident in 2009 in which the complainant in question – Michel Thibodeau – asked for a 7Up in French but received a Sprite. (No word on if he said sept or seven.) So what’s the real issue here? I don’t believe Air Canada carries Pepsi products, so he wouldn’t have been able to get a 7Up had he received service in French, English or Swahili for that matter. Was it just such a huge burden to have to ask in English? I think not.
Whether you agree with Air Canada being bound by the official languages act or not, the simple fact is that they are and they did come up short. They should be fined and those monies should be made available to organizations promoting French language and culture. By handing this money over to – let’s face it – an ambulance-chaser masquerading as a language martyr the court has declared open season on Air Canada for a battery of similar suits.

