TORONTO — Air Canada has named former premiers Frank McKenna and Pierre Marc Johnson to the board of directors that will oversee the airline after its restructuring, a move analysts say may help smooth its way in Ottawa.

McKenna, Liberal premier of New Brunswick from 1987 to 1997, and Johnson, briefly Parti Quebecois premier of Quebec in 1985, will join Air Canada CEO Robert Milton and eight other men on the board of ACE Aviation Holdings, the new Air Canada parent company created from the restructuring.

Michael Carney, a business professor at Concordia University, said Milton's approach to relations with the federal government has not been productive in the past.

"I don't think he was as delicate with Ottawa as he might have been, and he seems to have certainly alienated various ministers of transport and people in the Competition Bureau, and really they need to have a much closer relationship there," Carney said.

Air Canada has said the former Crown corporation faces unfair burdens under the Air Canada Act that its competitors are not limited by.

"A lot of that stuff could be solved if you had a new Air Canada Act or if the basic statutes governing the company were somehow changed," Carney said.

Also named to the board are Robert Brown, outgoing chairman of Air Canada and new CEO of CAE Inc.; Bernard Attali, former chairman and CEO of Air France; George Hamilton, CEO of Global Home Products; John McLennan, former CEO of Allstream, the former AT&T Canada; David Richardson, former chairman of Ernst and Young; Marvin Yontef, a senior partner at law firm Stikeman Elliott; Brett Ingersoll, managing director of Cerberus Capital Management; and Michael Green, president of Cerberus Operations.

Cerberus, a New York investment company, is putting $250 million into the airline. Ernst and Young is the accounting firm that has acted as the monitor during the airline's restructuring, while Stikeman Elliott has served as Air Canada's lawyers.

Milton, Brown and Johnson are the only directors of the restructured company who were on the previous Air Canada board, which was criticized in some circles for lax oversight.

Karl Moore, a McGill University business professor, said the new board should be able to stand up to management.

"These are guys with long-term senior reputations; they're going to make sure they aren't sullied by anything inappropriate so I think they'll provide the kind of oversight Air Canada needs," Moore said.

The board will not include a representative from major airline creditors Deutsche Bank or GE Capital Aviation Services. It also will not include former prime minister Brian Mulroney, who had been rumoured as a possible chairman.

"The ability to attract a board of this high calibre representing broad experience across all sectors on a global basis signals yet another vote of confidence in Air Canada's business plan and the airline's prospects going forward," Milton said in a statement.

Air Canada's creditors are set to meet in Montreal next week to vote on the airline's restructuring plan.