Evidence of meeting #5 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was transport.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Kathleen Fox  Chair, Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board
Sylvain Alarie  Professional Engineer, As an Individual
Gilles Primeau  Professional Engineer, As an Individual
Natacha Van Themsche  Director, Air Investigations, Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board
Jim Quick  President and Chief Executive Officer, Aerospace Industries Association of Canada
Jodi Diamant  Chief Engineer, Airworthiness & Certification, Pratt & Whitney Canada, As an Individual
David Curtis  President and Chief Executive Officer, Viking Air Limited, Longview Aviation Capital Corp.
Steven Bruce  Director, Design and Certification, Viking Air Limited, Longview Aviation Capital Corp.
Michael Deer  Airworthiness Specialist, Bell Textron Canada Limited
David Joseph Watson  Manager, Airworthiness and Air Safety, De Havilland Aircraft of Canada Limited, Longview Aviation Capital Corp.

4 p.m.

Professional Engineer, As an Individual

Gilles Primeau

I forgot to answer the second part of your question.

I have made the recommendations I mentioned in my presentation. I made some suggestions, but I wasn't sure whether Transport Canada had the authority to do certain things, such as requesting the inspection of certain parts.

With respect to what Ms. Fox just said, I don't think there was much power in that connection, but I made recommendations for new regulations, the one I told you about.

4 p.m.

Liberal

Fayçal El-Khoury Liberal Laval—Les Îles, QC

We have understood that the observations of Mr. Primeau and Mr. Alarie have not yet been noted in any investigation.

Even with respect to the questions and recommendations you sent to Boeing, you did not get a response. I think that here in Canada, when our experts send a report outside, it must be respected.

Can you explain to the committee why you didn't get a response?

Is there any hidden reason behind the scenes that did not allow Boeing to answer your questions?

4 p.m.

Professional Engineer, As an Individual

Gilles Primeau

The questions were posed directly to Boeing by email last Thursday, followed by a paper copy that was sent by registered mail. The last time I checked, it still hadn't been taken in at the headquarters in Chicago. The mail process could still take a couple of days. The FAA, however, did receive it.

4 p.m.

Liberal

Fayçal El-Khoury Liberal Laval—Les Îles, QC

Do you believe you are going to have answers to those questions and those recommendations?

4 p.m.

Professional Engineer, As an Individual

Gilles Primeau

I cannot know what has been done with my input. I respect that, because I respect the process of investigation. I wouldn't want to be blamed for having tried to interfere with something. All I have is my knowledge of physics. Even if we don't understand and apply physics properly, unfortunately, the laws of physics are always right. We will have to deal with the laws of humans in courts of law later, and I'm not good at that.

4 p.m.

Liberal

Fayçal El-Khoury Liberal Laval—Les Îles, QC

The opinions provided by experts on these subjects are contradictory. You are very experienced engineers.

How are we going to evaluate such complicated aeronautical engineering issues in such a case?

4 p.m.

Professional Engineer, As an Individual

Gilles Primeau

If Mr. Alarie and I made certain statements about certain systems on November 10, on Découverte, a Radio-Canada program, it's because we were certain of what we had discovered.

The CBC team also demanded to be able to corroborate our statements before broadcasting anything. So we brought in an engineer by the name of Peter Lemme, who worked for Boeing and with whom I was in contact. Let's just say that some of my findings surprised him. He told me:

“I'm still pondering them.”

However, we are going in the same direction.

4 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Vance Badawey

Thank you.

Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

4 p.m.

Bloc

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My first questions will be for the Transportation Safety Board representatives.

Earlier I had a question, and I got the answer when one of my colleagues was told that the Transportation Safety Board had not investigated the two accidents involving a Boeing 737 MAX because it had not been allowed to go to the site of the accidents to obtain evidence.

I would like to know what the usual procedure is in such cases, because, on the one hand, a total of 18 Canadian citizens were affected by this accident, and on the other hand, there are also Boeing 737 MAX aircraft in the air here. So we are very affected by these accidents.

4 p.m.

Natacha Van Themsche Director, Air Investigations, Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board

I'll answer that question.

First, I will put annex 13 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation of the International Civil Aviation Organization, or ICAO, into context. It is this annex that governs international investigations of aviation accidents and incidents. It includes very clear roles and responsibilities.

For example, in theory, the country where the accident takes place should be responsible for the investigation. Second, the countries that make up the investigation team, i.e. those that will actively conduct the accident investigation, are the State of Registry or State of the Operator of the aircraft, the state where the aircraft was designed and built, and the state where the engines were designed and built. These countries play a very active role in the investigation.

In the case of the Lion Air accident, Canada does not meet any of these criteria. The case of the Ethiopian Airlines flight is different. The annex I was talking about states that when citizens of a country are on board an aircraft involved in an accident, that country has expert status. However, this status is very limited. In fact, it allows them to visit the scene of the accident, to receive factual information that is ready to be publicly disclosed by the state responsible for the investigation, and finally, to receive a copy of the final report of the investigation. This is what annex 13 allows in such cases.

So, in the case of Lion Air, we have no status, and in the case of Ethiopian Airlines, we have expert status. That being said—

4:05 p.m.

Bloc

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

Thank you. That answers my question.

Basically, the expert status doesn't give us much more than the average person has. You get on a plane, you go and see the scene after the accident and you get the same documents, which are public. I understand that it doesn't give you much to go on.

However, could the Transportation Safety Board, for its part, have undertaken investigations into the 737 MAX here after the two accidents that occurred? We know we have some here.

Can you carry out such investigations? If so, why don't you do it?

4:05 p.m.

Chair, Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board

Kathleen Fox

First, our mandate is to investigate events, and accidents are events. Following the Ethiopian Airlines accident, there was a worldwide flight ban. Also, investigations by Ethiopian Airlines and by the United States were ongoing. In reality, we had no formal role to play. As I told you, we are closely monitoring the turn of events.

4:05 p.m.

Bloc

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

You had confidence in the process, given that these two accidents were being taken seriously and that other countries were going to check it out. So you're going to follow that.

4:05 p.m.

Chair, Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board

4:05 p.m.

Bloc

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

I understand. Thank you for the answers you gave to my questions.

I have some questions for Mr. Alarie and Mr. Primeau.

I'm trying to understand what happens when you design such a device and add systems, as has been the case. They didn't indicate in the manual that there was a new collision avoidance system, the MCAS, and they didn't train the pilots to use it. In fact, there's a one-hour general training on the aircraft that's done on an iPad, and the system is not even mentioned.

When we have a new system like this, is it common not to put it in the manual and not train the pilots in its use?

4:05 p.m.

Professional Engineer, As an Individual

Sylvain Alarie

On board the aircraft, they would have applied the changed product rule.

When they built the new plane, they had to take an inventory of everything new on board. When they added the MCAS, they had to establish the criticality of the system. This would have been classified as minor.

This means that, if the failures were major and the system was faulty, they would have slightly increased the pilots' workload.

In my opinion, that's where the mistake was made; it was misclassified. They took it for granted, like the trim system in general—

4:05 p.m.

Bloc

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

I'm interrupting because I'm running out of time.

If it was misclassified, do you think it was intentional on Boeing's part to limit the analyses or was it just a common mistake?

4:05 p.m.

Professional Engineer, As an Individual

Gilles Primeau

If this had been classified as risky or riskier, they would have been forced to do simulator training. Boeing, which even had an agreement with Southwest Airlines, did not want to do it. If there was a need for simulator training, there would be a $1-million rebate per aircraft.

4:10 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Vance Badawey

Thank you, Mr. Primeau.

Mr. Bachrach.

4:10 p.m.

NDP

Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to begin by acknowledging the one-year anniversary of the flight 302 disaster and express my condolences to the families and everyone who's been affected.

I'd also like to thank our witnesses for being here today.

My first question is for Mr. Primeau. It has to do with harmonization of the certification processes between our country and other countries. At a previous committee meeting, we had a chance to ask questions of Transport Canada officials about the validation improvement road map, one of the goals of which is to limit the technical study by validators in that process and to fully harmonize the validation and certification processes.

How would you describe the certification process between Canada and the U.S.? In light of the two crashes we've been discussing, are there questions about whether we should be moving towards common certification and the pursuit of harmonization?

4:10 p.m.

Professional Engineer, As an Individual

Gilles Primeau

I'm going to go back to the transcript from the February 25 meeting and repeat that I was in agreement with what was said by the Transport Canada people. This is also why this was a late addition in my preparation.

I had the idea of perhaps going towards a common certification. That would be a big bite to swallow. An intermediate step might be to dispatch experts to other national certification authorities and try to have a common understanding before the project starts. That's just an idea I had.

4:10 p.m.

NDP

Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

Thank you for that answer.

You also spoke a little bit about the grandfathering that occurs currently for systems that are interfaced with previously certified critical systems. Could you speak to how common this is in our current certification process, how frequently it occurs?

4:10 p.m.

Professional Engineer, As an Individual

Gilles Primeau

My last job was in Seattle, on the Mitsubishi regional jet, the MRJ. There was a big team whose only task was to try to contain suppliers trying to apply similarities so that their system could be installed on the aircraft without any change. Sometimes I joked, “Are you calling similarity against the Wright Flyer?” It's amazing.

The technical rules should lead. By that I mean, you need to qualify, you need to test, and if you've made a change for this new aircraft that is significant, that's where the CPR comes in—minor versus major changes, or non-significant versus significant changes. You just bite the bullet and go and test it. It's amazing, the endless discussions I have seen in my career. They might as well turn around and test it; it would have taken less time and fewer resources.

4:10 p.m.

NDP

Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

Thank you.

Going back to your suggestion that for every national certification every other country could dispatch its own regulators to participate, could you walk us through, in a little more detail, how that would have worked in this scenario around the Max 8, and how it would have caught the deficiencies and potentially prevented disaster?

4:10 p.m.

Professional Engineer, As an Individual

Gilles Primeau

The two recommendations I am making are separate from having an international team of experts. In this case, though, to try to answer your question directly, it would be the excellent reputation of Canadians in aerospace that might have been helpful.

Of the two recommendations for new regulations, the first one, which says “no grandfathering”, should have automatically caused the HSTS to be recertified.