The Globe and Mail reports in its Tuesday edition that news of Michael Rousseau's forthcoming retirement comes as hardly a surprise given the Air Canada chief executive officer's penchant for making a bad situation worse. Guest columnist Taylor Naokes wonders what Mr. Rousseau got up to over the last five years, after he promised to learn French. The video episode is one of the most tone-deaf and ill-conceived public-relations efforts in Canadian corporate history. While one may have reservations about overfocusing on domestic language policy, do not overlook the poor choices made by people who ought to have known better. It is as astonishing as it is perplexing that Mr. Rousseau was allowed to make the offending statement in the first place. The video in reaction to the LaGuardia crash, in which he said only two words of French, was overly technical and lacking in emotion. The video failed to convey a sense that Mr. Rousseau was taking charge. It came across as neither particularly sympathetic nor reassuring to the flying public. Learning a new language is hard, but Mr. Rousseau did not even try. Even if he had butchered the language in the LaGuardia video, he would have conveyed earnestness and humility.