Every now and then, during a slow news cycle, some media outlet will run a story about a fanatic coupon-clipper – almost invariably a housewife with plenty of discretionary time – who triumphantly demonstrates how she ends up with $300 worth of groceries for $19 by the simple expedient of clipping coupons from circulars, or mailing in rebate offers. It’s the kind of “free money” that anyone can have if they put in the time and effort, but when you have an actual “life,” you figure the satisfaction and savings just aren’t worth the tedium and mindless trolling.
Meet Ottawan Michel Thibodeau, the “language rights” equivalent of the compulsive coupon clipper. Instead of haunting supermarkets, he haunts bus companies and airlines, forever on the lookout for an abrogation of his right to hear the station stop, the weather, the time and the altitude in French, whether he is trundling across town or flying over Quebec City, Toronto or Kalamazoo.
On Wednesday the Federal Court of Canada ordered Air Canada to pay Mr Thibodeau $12,000, in part because in 2009, when he asked an English- speaking flight attendant for a 7 Up, he got a Sprite instead. That was only one of many other humiliations suffered by Mr Thibodeau and his wife Lynda in 2009 alone. There were occasions when they were not served in French at airports in Toronto, Ottawa and Atlanta (although they were evidently able to manage in English everywhere else in that town, unless they brought their own interpreter). They also complained about lapses in French-language services aboard Air Canada Jazz flights between Canada and the U.S.
The Thibodeaus know their way around language-rights suits. This is not their first win. When he was refused service in French while ordering a 7 Up on a 2000 Air Ontario flight from Montreal, he filed suit in Federal Court for $525,000 in damages (imagine how painful the sound of the English language must be to demand a half million dollars for suffering). The court ordered the airline to make a formal apology and pay him $5,375.95 – odd number that; maybe it included the price of a 7 UP – which is a far cry from what he asked, but still not a bad day’s take for filling out a form. No wonder it whetted their appetite for more.
Grievance collectors like Mr Thibodeau are the spawn of our rights culture, which supposes that minorities live in a constant state of fear of oppression or discrimination. Our courts are so sensitive to their assumed frailty that they tend to punish even the slightest lapse of vigilance as a way of reassuring them that they are loved.
These guilt payouts are absurd, and will only serve to encourage other ‘coupon-cutter’ copycats to shake down large corporations, which naturally regard the suits as a nuisance they willingly settle for what is to them piddling amounts in order to avoid publicity.
Mr Thibodeau must speak English if he is travelling widely beyond Quebec’s borders for business or pleasure. That wouldn’t be surprising. I am reminded of Norman Lester, an investigative reporter for the French-language CBC, who in 2001 caused an uproar in Montreal when he accused a Jewish General Hospital nurse of speaking to him only in English when he was a patient there. His claim was ridiculous, because he had been conversing with all and sundry at the hospital in fluent English until he decided to score political points with an indictment of one unilingual nurse. (In a book he wrote about Canada, The Black Book of English Canada, Lester viciously accused Canada of every evil under the sun.)
Another irony is that Anglophones in Quebec have very few linguistic rights, and even then such rights are often observed in the breach.
Rights must be tempered with common sense. It is unfortunate for French speakers when services are not available in their language on a flight here and there. But in the real world, stuff happens, and people of good will roll with it. When supermarkets run out of discounted items, they offer disgruntled customers a free product.
Next time Mr Thibodeau tries his little trick, the airlines should offer him a discounted ticket or maybe a case of 7 UP, and if that isn’t good enough and he persists in filing yet another suit, the Federal Court should inform him – in both official languages – that he is wasting their time.
National Post
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