Transport Committee on March 12th, 2020

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Minister, at every step, the FAA and, in turn, Boeing did not answer your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Let him answer the question.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

That is part of the normal process when we do a validation of an aircraft that is certified by another country.

We indicated that we required answers to the particular questions that we raised, which had to do with identification of stall and we continued to persist with that.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Minister, thank you.

Who overruled the concerns of the TC experts and approved the certification of the 737 Max?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

Certification of the Max 8 by Canada was done by Transport Canada.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Minister, immediately after the first crash—Lion Air flight 610—Transport Canada's technical experts once again raised the concerns, yet you failed to ground the aircraft.

Why?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

On that, we looked at the evidence that was beginning to come out at that time. At that time, the FAA came out with what they call an “airworthiness directive”, which they felt would address the possibility of this happening again while they were proceeding with the fix to the MCAS.

That airworthiness—

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

At any time did you share your concerns with WestJet, Air Canada and Sunwing?

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Doherty. Thank you, Minister.

Mr. Rogers.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome, Minister.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

Thank you.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

As you can appreciate, and all of us around this table appreciate, this is a very difficult study that we've been undertaking here. We've sent out condolences to the people impacted by these tragedies.

The first question I have for you is why did Canada not ground the Max 8 flight after the Lion Air crash? Did any other aviation authority do so?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

When a tragic accident like this occurs, the first thing we want to know is what happened and we go to the state of design, which is the United States and the FAA. What they came forward with was what's called an “airworthiness directive”, which provides, in this particular case, a procedure for crews should the same situation occur—while they are at the same time working on a fix for what is known as the MCAS system.

We looked at the airworthiness directive provided by the United States. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we went to Air Canada, WestJet and Sunwing and spoke to their test pilots and said this was being proposed. Amongst ourselves we said that it was not sufficient, because it is a procedure that must be done in a timely fashion. Instead of only memorizing the first two steps—the actual emergency quick reference checklist card is beside the pilot—we felt that it was important to memorize five steps.

We did our training differently from every other country in the world with respect to it because we felt that the airworthiness directive was insufficient. Air Canada, WestJet and Sunwing were very comfortable with it, and that is what we put in place in case a similar situation occurred before a fix was found for the MCAS.

To answer the second part of your question, no other country, by the way, grounded the Max 8 after the Lion Air crash.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

In summary, what were some of the factors that you and your officials had to consider before taking the decision to ground the fleet?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

When the tragic accident of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 occurred, we immediately tried to understand what had happened there. I would caution people not to use hindsight here because at the time, on March 10, when this occurred, everybody was trying to understand what happened. Could it have been a mechanical or electrical problem? Could it have been a pilot error? Could it have been a terrorist act? Nobody knew what had happened on this particular occasion. Because we knew there were Canadians on-board and we knew that there were Max 8s that flew in Canada, we were trying to understand what had happened. We were scrambling for information and were speaking to our international partners. We were getting the information, some of it anecdotal, from ground observers. We were trying to find out what had happened in terms of the communications from the control tower and air traffic control. We were trying to understand what had happened with this particular accident because we had no clear picture of what had happened.

We now know what had happened, but at the time we did not, until we obtained ADS-B data, which is GPS data that is transmitted from the aircraft up to a satellite and back down to the ground. The company that provided this is called Aireon. When we looked at that, we were wondering whether there might have been a similarity with the Lion Air crash. When we compared the 3D profile of the plane flying, we said that this looked very similar to it. It was at that point that we decided to ground the aircraft because we had evidence.

To my knowledge, today we are the only country that ever explained why we grounded this airplane.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

You said in your speech that restrictions will remain in place until Transport Canada is fully satisfied. If the Boeing 737 Max were to return to service after all of this, what steps could Transport Canada take to reassure the public about the aircraft's safety?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

That is a primary priority for us. We know that we want to make sure that Canadians who are going to fly on this airplane in the future will be completely comfortable with the knowledge that we have addressed the problem.

The problem has four aspects to it that we have to address: hardware changes, software changes, the procedures that pilots must be trained to do, and the training that they must undergo.

I've also said in the past that Canadian test pilots will fly this airplane as part of our validation of the certification, but only when we are 100% satisfied that this has truly been fixed will we allow this airplane to fly over Canadian airspace.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Rogers.

Go ahead, Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Minister, in the aftermath of the second Boeing 737 MAX accident, when 18 Canadians died, you told the press that you would not hesitate to board a 737 MAX, just as it was being grounded around the world. Two days later, you announced that the plane would be grounded from that point on.

Would you say that what you said at that time was irresponsible?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

No, not at all. If we had not decided to ground that plane, we would have issued the message that the plane could continue to fly, but that we recommended people not get on it. That would not have been a good message.

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

Minister, you said you would be ready to board the plane.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

The reality is that at that time we had not made a decision, because we did not know what the cause of the accident was. As I mentioned a few minutes ago, we did not know whether it was a mechanical problem or an electrical problem.

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

I understand.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

We didn't know if it was an act of terrorism. At that time, no one knew.

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

You wanted to know the cause, but elsewhere in the world, there were countries that decided, as a precaution, to ground it right away.

I have several more questions to ask you.