You are completely right, Ms. Barbot. If you are spoken to in the official language that is not your first official language, procedural rules stipulate somebody else must be found in order to serve you in your language for the rest of the flight. I can overlook a small mistake, but during a four-hour flight, if you are being addressed in a language other than your own, this is not only unacceptable,and furthermore it is a breach of our own rules.
The problem is this: since Air Canada acquired Canadian International, the airline has aimed at having 100% of its employees bilingual, which has been the case for the last five years. So long as a certain number of our flight attendants remain unilingual anglophones, incidents such as those will occur. There are people who come from all over the country, and to my mind, this is a matter of respect, and that is why I myself have learned French. Unfortunately, some people do not think that way. For some, if they speak to you in English and if you are too kind to ask them to speak to you in French, that is fine. I can assure you that according to our rules, if a client wishes to be served in the language of his or her choice, and the flight attendant is unable to speak that language, the flight attendant must ask to be replaced by a colleague who is able to communicate fully with the client. The client is of the greatest importance.