Transport Committee on Feb. 25th, 2020

[Nicholas Robinson]

I take you back to the opening comments that we provided this committee and our certificate efforts on the Airbus 220. I mentioned that there were more than 150,000 person hours provided to the certification of that aircraft.

Now, we look at all the aircraft in the aviation system right now. If we needed to apply that exact same standard to each and every aircraft, we wouldn't have the accessibility to aircraft and the amount of aircraft in our system. We would not be able to certify every single aircraft to that degree.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

The 150,000 person hours sounds like a lot, and it is a lot. In terms of time, is certifying an aircraft something that would be measured in years?

[David Turnbull]

It's six years.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

My final question is very direct. If the FAA certifies this aircraft and there's a lingering doubt in Transport Canada's mind, will this aircraft fly in Canadian airspace?

[Nicholas Robinson]

No. I can assure this committee, and we've assured Canadians previously, that we will not validate this aircraft until our safety concerns, which we addressed back in April with the FAA and continue to pursue and get answers on, are addressed. Until our concerns are addressed, we will not unground this aircraft.

[David Turnbull]

It may also be worth noting that we already have additional measures we're planning to put in place above and beyond what would be required by the FAA, and this is open knowledge to both Boeing and the FAA. We have suggested they do numerous things. Fortunately, in some cases, as time went on they started to adopt these ideas. I guess they came to their own conclusions. It validated our concerns, but we're not done yet. We still have unique procedural elements in the flight manual on the table, which could be part of a unique Canadian aircraft flight manual supplement. It's part of our certification that would not be equivalent or common with the FAA. We have the same opportunity to do that with training as well.

We are not bound exclusively by what the FAA comes out with.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Bittle. Thank you, Mr. Turnbull.

We're now going to the last round.

Mr. Barsalou-Duval, you have two and a half minutes.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is for both Mr. Turnbull and Mr. Robinson. However, it may be more for you, Mr. Turnbull, given that you are in charge more specifically of issuing certifications.

The MCAS system is recent, I believe. It was installed in the 737 MAX planes. Considering that it was a new system, I imagine you had to concern yourself with this system from a validation and certification perspective.

Can you tell me how the problem that struck the 737 MAX planes could have gone undetected?

[David Turnbull]

Thank you.

We have to go back to the original validation where, as previously explained, we look at the changes from the previous model.

The MCAS was presented to us. The explanation for its existence and the way it operates was defined to us. However, at the time we did not have cause to dig any deeper. We understood the extent to which it was explained, and we went on from there. We focused on other areas. Unfortunately, this is the way we learn sometimes. Most of the amendments to the standards throughout history have been a result—

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Do you believe that there was negligence, that this was a mistake on your part?

[David Turnbull]

No, not at all.

We are relying on what is presented to us in line with the concept of doing a validation. As Mr. Robinson explained, we cannot go back and recertify the entire aircraft. We have to choose the areas we will review.

It so happened that MCAS was not an area that we delved into in any great depth. We were satisfied with the explanation. We raised issues on other matters.

Obviously, the accidents have revealed things about MCAS that we surely wish we had understood, and I believe the FAA would feel the same.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

I am trying to understand what you are saying. You say you verified something else, but did not verify the MCAS system. I asked you whether the fact that the you did not verify the MCAS system was a mistake and you answered in the negative.

I don't understand why you are saying that it wasn't a mistake.

[David Turnbull]

I don't like to be flippant, but with 20/20 hindsight—I believe one of the members mentioned that—we know a lot more now than we did then. Often in aircraft accidents—and there have been many throughout history—what we learned from that accident was not known by the designer nor by the regulator. It became common knowledge after the fact.

This is a situation where we learn and have learned about failure modes of the MCAS, how it relates to the basic architecture of the airplane.

I can assure you if we had had any of that knowledge at the time, we would have been digging a lot further, but with the aviation industry, as with the automobile industry and any other product that's produced, when things go wrong and things break, those are opportunities where we learn things we previously did not know.

It's not a question of negligence unless somebody is deliberately hiding information. That's a completely different subject. This is simply a question of what we learn after these accidents.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

In your opinion, if you had spent 150,000 hours conducting validations like on the CSeries planes, would you have discovered this problem?

[David Turnbull]

Oh yes, indeed. The certification process of every aircraft that we go through involves stumbling over problems that we cannot perceive.

I'm sure many of you have wondered why it has taken so long to get the Max back in service. It is a result of the certification process. There have been three iterations, and still one to go with the software patch that Boeing is developing because partway through the development of the software patch more problems were discovered and they had to fix them. That's one of the benefits of the certification process. You have the opportunity to wring it out, to test the system, to prove that it operates. If you discover a problem, you do not proceed. You go back and fix it.

That's why we're still sitting here today with the 737 Max on the ground.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Turnbull.

Thank you, Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

That will do it for the rounds of questions.

Gentlemen, thank you for coming out and being very forthright in giving us the information we were expecting. We all know this is a very sensitive topic. We're going to try to get through it with the expectations of the committee members. I do, once again, thank you for that.

I thank members for the questions, as well as for drawing the information out from the witnesses.

I'm going to suspend for about two minutes before we get on with committee business.

Following that, we will have to clear the room because we will be going in camera.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

We will reconvene.

Members, as we have new roles going into this session on this committee, I'm going to ask if there is a desire to go in camera or whether you want to stay in an open session.

If there is a desire to go in camera, I would require a motion.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

We're good.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Everybody is fine. Good. Let's proceed.

We have a few items that we want to discuss with respect to committee business, the first being the current study, and then subsequent meetings. We're doing the aircraft certification process study right now. With that, we do have meetings scheduled for March 10, 12 and 24.

Is that fine?

Mr. El-Khoury.

[Fayçal El-Khoury, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Mr. Chair, I have a motion.

I propose that Mr. Xavier Barsalou-Duval be a vice-chair for this committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. El-Khoury.

Are there any questions or comments on the motion?

[Scot Davidson, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

You don't want to hear what I have to say.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

We do have a motion presented by Mr. El-Khoury that Mr. Barsalou-Duval be appointed as vice-chair of the committee.