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.
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Minister, the director general for civil aviation at Transport Canada, Nicholas Robinson, said in May 2019, following the Ethiopian Airlines disaster, that he had full confidence in the FAA.
Do you agree with this assessment?
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Marc Garneau Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC
We have to make our decisions about questions like that at the time we are asked those questions. At the time—
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
But you had concerns from Transport Canada officials. There had been an accident.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Marc Garneau Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC
Yes, but let me explain what a concern letter is. It's not necessarily saying that we're not going to accept this aircraft. We're saying there are some things we need to better understand and some things we don't agree with. That's an ongoing process. It happens as part of the normal certification. It can also happen the other way around. When we certify an aircraft, another country may have some questions to ask. It's a very complex, a very technical process.
4:05 p.m.
NDP
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Marc Garneau Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC
Everything is simple in hindsight. I'll say that.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Vance Badawey
Thank you, Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Bachrach.
We'll move on to Mr. Doherty.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Minister, a number of times in your testimony you have referred to hindsight as being 20/20.
The information that we have received shows us that you had a clear view from day one: from November 9, 2016, when the test pilot wrote about their concerns; from May of 2017, one month before the certification, when they raised the concerns once again; from four weeks after the first crash, when concerns were raised once again by your technical experts. It was raised in the concern paper that you're referring to.
Minister, at all of steps along the way, you had an opportunity. You said you'd take full responsibility. It took one person to say, "Wait a second. We're not getting the answers to the questions that we have." Your technical experts did their job.
At any time during the process prior to the certification of the 737 Max, did Boeing or the FAA communicate to you a tight timeline for delivery of the 737 Max to Canadian operators and that they would like to see the certification made in June of 2017?
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Marc Garneau Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC
No, they didn't communicate with me directly.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
So you're not.... Minister, I'm going to refer back to....
Your director is actually jogging your memory.
You referred to the concern paper that you're well aware of. On page 2 it states:
Please note that in order to meet its delivery commitments to the Canadian operators, Boeing has requested Transport Canada to issue the 737-8 MAX ATC in June of 2017. To avoid delivery delays to our operators, Transport Canada will review and discuss FAA position on this concern paper during its upcoming 737-9 validation activities. Therefore, this concern paper
—as you rightly noted—
will remain open when the 737-8 MAX ATC is issued by Transport Canada.
Despite the serious concerns regarding the issues, Minister, your department still certified this aircraft.
Now that Mr. Turnbull has jogged your memory, do you remember now that Boeing and FAA told you about the timelines?
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Marc Garneau Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC
I'm aware of the concern letter. I'm also aware, as you pointed out, that we had decided that we would still accept it as an ongoing open file.
I'll pass it to David Turnbull—
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
I have one more question for you on this. Mr. Turnbull can answer this as well.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Minister Garneau, I just want to know: At any time during this process, did you or Mr. Turnbull communicate your concerns to WestJet, Air Canada or Sunwing?
4:05 p.m.
Director, National Aircraft Certification, Department of Transport
No, we did not. Perhaps it would help if I re-explained what Minister Garneau has already explained with respect to the process with the concern paper.
First off, this concern paper that you refer to did not specifically raise a technical or safety issue. It did not. It asked a question. The methodology by which Boeing demonstrates basic stall compliance—section 25.201—was in question. We did not understand fully the methodology that Boeing had used. There were a number of systems involved with respect to stalls, MCAS being one of them, which is part of the STS system; the EFS system; and there are other aspects of the design. We were trying to ascertain and understand the role these systems play in affecting the stall compliance. There was not a specific identification of a concern.
When the FAA responded to us—
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
4:10 p.m.
Director, National Aircraft Certification, Department of Transport
Well, I'm the one who signs off on those, respectively, Mr. Doherty—
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
4:10 p.m.
Director, National Aircraft Certification, Department of Transport
—and I can tell you where we're coming from.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Mr. Turnbull, I actually had technical advisers read through this—737 Max pilots themselves—and they were absolutely shocked to read what we read—that you or the minister, and the minister has accepted responsibility, certified this aircraft.
I will bring you back to edition 2, where you once again disagreed with both of the positions of the FAA. Your technical experts disagreed—you're absolutely right—with the stall identification criteria they're using and how they pertain to CFR in section 25.201.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Marc Garneau Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC
Mr. Doherty, you've just made a claim that you have a source, a pilot, who has told you that they are “horrified”, if that's the term you used, by this concern paper. I would ask you to first of all provide the name of that person and their assessment of it, in writing. In fairness, I would like to hear what your source is.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Maninder Sidhu Liberal Brampton East, ON
I'd like to start by offering my condolences to the families affected or impacted by this tragedy.
Thank you, Minister Garneau, Mr. Turnbull and Mr. McCrorie, for being here today.
Minister, I'm just trying to understand the difference between Transport Canada and FAA. Can you provide some specific details on where Transport Canada took different steps from the FAA in dealing with the Max 8 situation?
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Marc Garneau Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC
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.