Habs Owner Masterfully Sidesteps Language Issue

Geoff Molson skates effortlessly around language issue.

It seems that Geoff Molson has invented a neat language workaround for companies wanting to employ a non-French-speaking boss.

Air Canada should take note of how companies can hire whom they want to the top job without the blowback associated with the hiring of a unilingual anglo boss in a French province.

For those who don't follow hockey in general or the Habs in particular Geoff Molson fired the General-manager of the team Marc Bergevin, a long-overdue sacking made urgent by the Montreal Canadiens disastrous on-ice results this season.

Quite simply, Molson hired an anglo Jeff Gorton, a unilingual American, to replace Bergervin but re-defined his title as senior vice president, while committing to hiring a new French-speaking general manager. The two will work together but in reality, the new general manager will be a de facto assistant general manager with a general manager title.

A clever workaround.

The new 'general manager' who will work under Gorton will be the face of the team, dealing with the media while the real boss will be quietly squirrelled away in his ivory tower, making all the real decisions.

 It's a solution that is painfully transparent and I was interested if the French hockey media would go along with the charade.

After watching Molson's press conference where he breathlessly confessed that the job of leading the team is more than a one-man job in Montreal and where the necessity of working in two languages made the hiring a duo necessary, I wondered if the charade would pass muster.

It certainly did.

The commentators attending the news conference played along because that's what hockey journalists do. Not one dared ask Molson the obvious question about his hiring of the unilingual Gorton and nobody asked why Gorton did not attend the news conference.
I predict Mr. Gorton will be extremely camera-shy, understandable in the circumstances.

Bravo! Well-done. 

Mr. Molson serves us with a useful lesson in that as long as the language issue is somehow addressed, even though fakery, the public and media will go along with any charade.

But alas not everyone will accept the misdirection and already language fanatics are crying murder most foul.
It didn't take long for the anglophobes to come out of the woodwork as the insufferable  Rejean Tremblay in Journal de Montreal

"Gorton, an American, doesn't speak a word of French, but is now the vice-president of hockey, which is in fact, the real general manager of the Canadiens.
He's another Michael Rousseau, the president of Air Canada who doesn't speak a word of French.
What a sinister insult! And what cowardice.

So They're going to hire a 'frog' lap-dog to talk to the public and also to make the job easy.  

But we all understood that Gorton will have the final say when the discussions get tough"

The question is who would want such a job, a marionette required to repeat in French what is already decided in English??

Answer: Lots of people.

As fpr Air Canada, they need to hire a new French-speaking CEO while simultaneously promoting unlingual Michael Rousseau to the newly-created position of SUPER-CEO.

In Quebec, that'll work....