Evidence of meeting #6 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 aircraft.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Maninder Sidhu Liberal Brampton East, ON
Thank you for the answer.
I have a two-part question. What role, if any, are Transport Canada officials playing in the FAA evaluation of a possible return to service of the Max 8 and how much of that information is being shared with us? Are we simply following their work or is there a back and forth?
Liberal
Marc Garneau Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC
We're on three big, important committees, or have been: the CMT, the certification management team; another called the JOEB, the joint operations evaluation board; and the third, the JATR, the joint authorities technical review.
We're deep into these committees that are evaluating this, so it's not just an American exercise with our watching from the side. We, and the Europeans and Brazilians are intimately involved in the whole process, and we will do our own validation of the final fix when it comes, including Canadian pilots flying the modified Max 8 to ensure that we are satisfied. We will make sure, if we feel there are certain procedures that have to be trained to and that simulator time is required, to make that compulsory in Canada.
Liberal
Maninder Sidhu Liberal Brampton East, ON
Finally, is Transport Canada considering changing its validation system for the approval of internationally manufactured aircraft, and how often does it accept the state of design certification coming from other countries versus conducting our own tests to validate the certificate?
Liberal
Marc Garneau Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC
In the past, we have done validation of aircraft certified by the United States or the Europeans, and we have validated their certification. There's no question that after the Max 8 tragedies and the recognition that there were some problems there, that we're re-evaluating how we do validation of certification so that we give a more critical look at it and subject that certification process to a much higher scrutiny.
Liberal
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
I want to remind those who are here today and those who are tuning in why we are here. It's for the families of the victims: Ameen Ismail Noormohamed, Dawn Tanner, Rubi Pauls, Darcy Belanger, Stéphanie Lacroix, Angela Rehhorn, Kosha Vaidya, Prerit Dixit, Ashka Dixit, Anushka Dixit, Micah Messent, Pius Adesanmi, Amina Ibrahim Odowa, Sofia Abdulkadir, Derick Lwugi, Danielle Moore, Peter DeMarsh and Jessica Hyba.
Minister, I don't believe this meeting has brought any relief or solace to the victims' families. If anything, I think it's raised even more questions, or perhaps it has validated the questions they've had. It took almost a year for you to meet with these families. As a matter of fact, in the last Parliament, when the motion to study this was raised, the Liberal majority shut it down. We are here today for them. We are here for the families who have listened every day to this testimony.
I appreciate that you've taken full responsibility for this. The concerns we have and the concerns that have been raised by the FAA or by the congressional hearing clearly point to the fact that this aircraft should not be recertified and that the FAA, and Boeing as well, should be held accountable for this.
Minister, will you be looking internally at this process? What is your message, given the information that we shared today, to the families that are listening in?
Liberal
Marc Garneau Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC
I met with the families and I apologized to them personally for not meeting with them earlier. The culture at Transport Canada, an organization I'm extremely proud of, that is very, very competent, is one of dealing with technical issues. We should have been more sensitive to the fact there were humans also involved here, and I apologized to the families. We learned some lessons there, because as you probably noticed, when flight 752 was tragically shot down in Iran, we were much quicker to react.
So I apologized for that. Our culture was to try to find the source of the problem. The fact that I did not, nor did other government officials, meet with them right after is something that I accept in terms of responsibility—
Conservative
Liberal
Marc Garneau Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC
I spent three and a half hours with them and I tried to answer their questions. I cannot imagine the pain they feel from those losses. I was there right with them for three and a half hours and I am deeply—
Conservative
Liberal
Marc Garneau Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC
Yes, of course. The pain, the loss, the suffering—it is impossible for me to imagine it, how much they suffered, and I deeply apologized for that.
Conservative
Conservative
Liberal
Marc Garneau Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC
You have said that this airplane, based on the—
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Minister, you will understand my disappointment—
Liberal
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
You will understand my disappointment, that when I read your documents—
Liberal
