Yes, and I think very few people know about this, but Canada has played an extremely important role in the last year in addressing the problem with the MCAS system and in working with other regulators to come up with a solution to it.
If I may be permitted to cite the following, because it is quite a long list.... We have played a leading role internationally in ensuring a safe return to service of the Boeing Max 8. In April of 2019, a month after the Ethiopian crash, Canada set the stage by identifying to the Federal Aviation Administration keys areas of concern that must be addressed before the aircraft can return to service in Canada.
These key areas include acceptable levels of pilot workload—an extremely important factor—the architecture of the flight controls and, thirdly, the minimum training required for crew members.
In April last year, I publicly said that simulator training was required. In addition, Canada had been advocating since the beginning that simulator training would be required before pilots can fly the aircraft again. Boeing has now agreed that simulator training is required. Boeing has since committed to full-stall simulator training to familiarize crews with the angle-of-attack failure that occurred in both the Ethiopian and Indonesian accidents.
Canada also discovered that natural stall characteristics testing had not been performed on the Max with the speed trim system, the FS system and the MCAS system while those systems are inactive. In other words, when those systems are inactive, the plane can still stall, but there had not been testing of those characteristics when those two systems were turned off. That's something that we brought to their attention. We convinced the FAA that stall testing was required to validate safe-flight handling characteristics with the MCAS system off.
Canada also proposed a procedural change to reduce excessive cockpit distraction and workload conditions by allowing the crew to disable the stick shaker warning within the cockpit, which is another important contribution.
The leadership that we have demonstrated with my team in working with the FAA and with the Europeans and the Brazilians is clearly indicated here in how we are actively working to fix this problem, and Canada's input is being taken very seriously.