The LaGuardia crash isn’t about Official Languages |
We may be focusing on the wrong aspect of the LaGuardia crash.
I say this as a Québécois who is also annoyed the president of Canada’s national airline can’t speak French, apparently hasn’t learned despite a promise to do so (five years ago) and who doesn’t seem to have consulted Air Canada’s public relations team before making a particularly tone-deaf public statement.
The far more significant issue, though, is that it is becoming increasingly clear it’s no longer safe for Canadians — pilots as much as passengers — to fly to American airports.
This is the national conversation we ought to be having, not another spat about language politics. And I suspect that conversation is one Prime Minister Mark Carney, the federal government and Air Canada’s c-suite really doesn’t want to have either.
The LaGuardia crash wasn’t an “accident”: it was one inevitable consequence of Donald Trump’s ideological war against “big government.” Trump’s policies have resulted in overworked and underpaid air traffic controllers still dealing with the mass firings Trump (and his delegation of power to Elon Musk’s DOGE) inflicted last year. The recording of the air traffic controller overseeing the accident at LaGuardia indicates as much (though the causes are still under investigation). The controller appeared to have been distracted by another ongoing event as the Air Canada flight was landing, leading the........