Official Languages Committee on Sept. 23rd, 2026

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Sorensen, I understand you might not have read that statement.

As chair of the board of directors, will you commit before the committee to investigating whether French is treated the same as other languages, such as German, Danish or Dutch? Let's look at all languages. Would you commit, today, to investigating whether French is respected in the Canadian airline named Air Canada? I would remind you that the name of our country appears in the name of your company.

[Vagn Sorensen]

I'm aware of that, and I can assure you it is very respected. As I said before, we have standards for bilingual services, which we do everything we can to uphold. French is definitely respected, and I commit that we will improve that stance even more in the future.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Sorensen, would you commit to reporting back to us on the results of this investigation? I believe it's unacceptable for French to be treated this way on Air Canada flights, where you have an obligation to speak French and English. What do you think?

[Vagn Sorensen]

With all due respect, I don't really agree with the premise of your question because I think that bilingual services are given extremely high priority within Air Canada, and we do everything we can—everything that's in our power—to abide by the standards we've set for offering bilingual services. We achieve that in the majority of cases. You can also see it from the development of the complaints, which are only a quarter of what they were three years ago.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Sorensen.

Are you questioning the articles published on July 7 by Radio-Canada and Le Journal de Montréal? The Journal de Montréal article was written by journalist Raphaël Pirro. I didn't make it up.

[Vagn Sorensen]

I'm not familiar with that specific article, but we can—

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Would you to commit to sending us a written response after an internal investigation? I understand you can't know everything, since you don't take part in operations. Can you still make a commitment here today?

[Vagn Sorensen]

I can make a commitment that I'll read the said article and we can make a comment on it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yvan Baker]

Thank you, Mr. Godin.

Mr. Deschênes-Thériault, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Mr. Sorensen, thank you for joining us.

You've been chair of the board of directors at Air Canada for almost a decade now, so your testimony is all the more interesting in the context of today's meeting.

There have been major linguistic controversies at Air Canada in recent years, including the hiring of a unilingual anglophone CEO, the speech he gave at the chamber of commerce and the pre-recorded video released last spring. In addition, there were a whole series of smaller incidents, violations of the Official Languages Act, which are well documented in various annual reports of the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages of Canada. On several occasions over the last few years, Air Canada has ranked at the top for the number of complaints received at the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages of Canada.

Here's my question. As chair of the board of directors, how do you view the various investigation reports, the various reports of the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages of Canada, and what importance do you give to the recommendations in those reports?

[Vagn Sorensen]

We obviously take it very seriously and look at the recommendations. In terms of the number of complaints or the number of cases that have arisen around our ability to deliver bilingual services, I'd like to point out that among all the institutions that are subject to the Official Languages Act, Air Canada is by far the biggest one in terms of having the biggest number of passengers.

[Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Sorensen.

You mentioned that you take the recommendations of the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages of Canada very seriously. Can you give us some real examples of recommendations that were implemented following a commissioner's report?

[Vagn Sorensen]

What I can tell you is that in terms of the Canada Transportation Act, I've been advised that Air Canada always complies with our statutory obligations, including the notice requirements and consultation framework set out in the Canada Transportation Act. There—

[Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Mr. Sorensen, I was referring more to the reports of the Commissioner of Official Languages. Under the Official Languages Act, there are obligations to meet and, when there are violations, complaints are filed and investigation reports are produced.

In your first answer, you said that you take the recommendations of the Commissioner of Official Languages very seriously. I would therefore like to ask for an example of recommendations that have been implemented under your leadership.

[Vagn Sorensen]

I'd like to refer that question to Mr. Rheault, who works with this on a daily basis.

[David Rheault]

Thank you for the question.

When the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages makes recommendations, we always take them very seriously. I'll give you an example. We have training videos. The Office of the Commissioner recommended that employees involved in service complaints redo the training, and we've implemented that recommendation. Now, when an employee is involved in an incident with a passenger and a complaint is filed with the Office of the Commissioner, we inform the employee and ensure that they redo their initial awareness training on service in both official languages.

[Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Thank you.

Mr. Sorensen, the next CEO has been hired and is someone who masters both official languages. It would have been hard to do otherwise, given what happened last spring. Will you commit to ensuring that all future Air Canada CEOs are bilingual? Is that an essential condition? If so, could you make it a company policy so that we never again have an Air Canada CEO who doesn't speak French?

[Vagn Sorensen]

I would say, going forward, yes.

We are delighted to have hired a president of Anko van der Werff's stature.

He will be able to communicate in both official languages, so yes—

[Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Sorensen. I'm sorry to interrupt, but we're running out of time.

Finally, the commissioner tabled an investigation report in July 2026 following a complaint about flights between Montreal and Bathurst no longer being offered. One of its recommendations is to do an impact analysis of this decision in the next six months to see what can be done to mitigate the negative impacts.

Will you commit to following this recommendation from the Commissioner of Official Languages?

[Vagn Sorensen]

Decisions around route openings or discontinuations are obviously operational ones that the board is not involved in. Management makes those decisions, and they obviously follow a lot of criteria, the most important one being demand for the route and—

[Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

We're not necessarily talking about a decision on the company's day-to-day operations here. We're talking about a policy. Under the Official Languages Act, an impact analysis must be conducted after a decision is made. In this case, the impact analysis doesn't seem to have been done. My question is not necessarily about current operations. Will the impact analysis of this decision be done in the next six months, as recommended by the commissioner?

[Vagn Sorensen]

Yes, I think that sort of recommendation is under investigation internally, but what's important to me to say is that we did comply with our statutory obligations, including notice requirements and the consultation framework as set out in the Transportation Act, as we should. The recommendations of the commissioner are being reviewed internally for the time being.

[Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Thank you. I was really talking about the Official Languages Act, particularly the obligations under Part VII, not necessarily the Canada Transportation Act.

Thank you for your testimony today. We appreciate it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yvan Baker]

Mr. Sorensen, thank you for your appearance before our committee today.

I sincerely hope the members of our committee can have a strong and productive working relationship with you and your colleagues from Air Canada going forward in order to help resolve some of the issues that members of all sides have raised with you today. I think a strong relationship is founded on transparency and honesty, so I want to share a few thoughts with you. I will be frank with you.

Air Canada, as Monsieur Godin alluded to earlier, is Canada's national airline or flag carrier. With this designation and with Air Canada's founding as a government-owned organization, as a Crown corporation, Air Canada benefits from what I think are many privileges. I'll give some examples of that. The marketing benefit of being the flag carrier is that you enjoy a quasi-monopolistic position—sometimes monopolistic and sometimes oligopolistic. Canadian law protects you from competition from foreign airlines domestically. Governments of all stripes and taxpayers have provided significant bailouts to Air Canada during difficult times for your business over the years, in the billions of dollars. Air Canada has asked for and received from governments help with labour disputes with your staff over the years.

This in part has helped lead to Air Canada's success and profitability over the years. However, in my mind, being Canada's national airline also comes with responsibilities. Some of those responsibilities include charging Canadians reasonable prices for flights. It includes providing reliable service. It includes compensating your pilots and flight attendants and staff fairly. It includes maintaining regional service to smaller communities across Canada. It includes making yourself available to MPs of committees when they occasionally ask you to present to them or testify on issues that, as you can see, are very important to many Canadians. Of course, one of the responsibilities is providing services in both official languages, as is required by Canadian law.

Unfortunately, in the view of I think many Canadians, and certainly in my view, Air Canada has all too frequently not delivered on these responsibilities. My ask of you is that you and your team take back the comments from me and from all colleagues, reflect on them and do your best to address what we all have raised so that the next time you come and present at our committee, which I hope will be soon, we'll be able to say that Air Canada not only enjoys the privileges but also fulfills the responsibilities of being Canada's national airline.

Thank you for being with us, Mr. Sorensen.

We are suspended.

[Proceedings continue in camera]