Transport Committee on Feb. 16th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Good afternoon, everyone.

Welcome to meeting number 16 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of January 25, 2021. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. So you are aware, the webcast will always show the person speaking rather than the entirety of the committee.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to outline a few rules to follow. First off, members and witnesses may speak in the official language of their choice. Interpretation services are available for this meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of floor, English or French.

For members participating in person, proceed as you usually would when the whole committee is meeting in person in the committee room. Keep in mind the directives from the Board of Internal Economy regarding masking and health protocols.

Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. If you are on the video conference, please click on the microphone icon to unmute. For those in the room, your microphone will be controlled as normal by the proceedings and verification officer. I remind everyone that all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair.

Finally, when you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute.

With regard to a speaking list, as always, the committee clerk and I will do the very best we can to maintain the order of speaking for all members, whether they are participating virtually or in person.

With that, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Tuesday, January 26, 2021, the committee is meeting today to continue its study on the aircraft certification process.

I will now welcome and introduce our witnesses for today. From the Department of Transport, we have Nicholas Robinson, director general, civil aviation; and David Turnbull, director of national aircraft certification. They are by no means rookies to this committee. This is not the first time they've sat in those seats as witnesses. All of us are very familiar with these two witnesses.

With that introduction, I am now going to turn it over to the witnesses, for five minutes each, to introduce themselves as well as give their testimony.

Mr. Robinson and Mr. Turnbull, the floor is yours.

[Nicholas Robinson, Director General, Civil Aviation, Department of Transport]

Good evening, Mr. Chair, Ms. and Mr. Vice-Chair and committee members.

I'll be speaking on behalf of both Dave and me. Let me begin by reintroducing myself.

My name is Nicholas Robinson. As the director general of civil aviation at Transport Canada, I'm responsible for leading a team tasked with maintaining aviation safety in Canada, and that includes aircraft certification. I'm joined today, as you've mentioned, by David Turnbull, my colleague, who is the director of national aircraft certification within Transport Canada.

We're pleased to be here with you once again to continue our discussion on aircraft certification. I believe the last time we met was in November 2020.

Mr. Chair, since our last appearance Transport Canada aviation safety experts have completed their independent review of the design changes to the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft and have validated the changes after a 22-month investigation involving in excess of 16,000 hours of review by Canadian experts.

[Fayçal El-Khoury, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, we cannot hear.

The sound is really cutting in and out. I didn't even hear half of what the witness was saying.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

In your discussion just now, I couldn't hear any translation so we're not hearing it, as per Mr. El-Khoury's comments as well as those of the translator.

[Fayçal El-Khoury, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

What I'm saying, Mr. Chair, is that we cannot hear. I mean we can't hear 50% of the words. They are not reaching our ears. The voice is not clear.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Mr. Clerk, can you hear me?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Michael MacPherson]

We can hear you fine. The sound seems to be fine for everyone else. It may be a connectivity issue on his end. We're having our technicians look into it. Just bear with us one moment, please.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Okay. We'll give you a minute or two.

Mr. Robinson, please continue.

[Nicholas Robinson]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Since our last appearance, Transport Canada aviation safety experts have completed their independent review of the design changes of the Boeing 737 MAX, and have validated the changes after a 22-month investigation, involving in excess of about 16,000 hours of review by Canadian experts.

In addition, Transport Canada issued a unique airworthiness directive for the Boeing 737 MAX, which outlines the required modifications to be made to the aircraft prior to the return to service in Canadian airspace. We also issued an interim order for operators that clearly outlines and indicates Transport Canada's expectations and requirements for additional training for crew members prior to the aircraft's return to service.

As a final step, working closely with our Canadian aviation stakeholders, including the operators of the MAX and their air crew unions, on January 20, 2021, Transport Canada lifted the existing notice to airmen, referred to often as a NOTAM, which prohibited the commercial operation of the aircraft in Canadian airspace. This signalled the return to service of the aircraft in Canada.

As I have previously highlighted to this committee, Transport Canada has worked extensively with the FAA and other key certifying authorities, including the European Union Aviation Safety Agency or EASA, the National Civil Aviation Agency of Brazil or ANAC, as well as the three Canadian operators of the Boeing 737 MAX—Air Canada, WestJet and Sunwing—and their pilot unions, throughout our entire validation process of the aircraft to ensure that we addressed all factors prior to the safe return to service of this aircraft.

This is a clear demonstration of Transport Canada's commitment to keep Canadians, the travelling public and the transportation system safe and secure.

Transport Canada's certification experts, by their rigour and thoroughness, have demonstrated great leadership throughout the process, and were instrumental in guiding the aircraft design changes that we see today. Transport Canada is fully satisfied that all its safety concerns have been addressed, that the required modifications have been incorporated, that the enhanced flight crew procedures are in place and that all applicable training has been conducted for our Canadian operators to return this aircraft back into service.

While global certification authorities have worked extensively together in the review of this aircraft, the decision to certify the aircraft is one that Canada has taken independently. The differences between the FAA and Transport Canada in their procedures and training demonstrate these independent actions.

Transport Canada has issued its own airworthiness directive to include design features beyond what was required by the FAA. It has also mandated its own enhanced training associated with the 737 MAX. While there was a great deal of convergence between authorities, we did have our differences, which are identified and reflected in the documents I have outlined here today.

I would like to extend my sincere condolences, once again, to the families who have lost their loved ones in both the Lion Air tragedy as well as the Ethiopian Airlines tragedy. I cannot begin to comprehend the impact it has had on their lives and I realize that no words will make this easier, but I hope that the actions Transport Canada has taken over the last 22 months to ensure the safety and security of this aircraft may prove some small relief.

Mr. Chair, I would like to thank you for the time you have given me and my colleague to appear again before this committee, and I look forward to answering your questions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Robinson.

Mr. Turnbull, you have the floor, for five minutes.

[David Turnbull, Director, National Aircraft Certification, Department of Transport]

I have no opening remarks. We're ready to get into questions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

We do have a speaking order. First on our list, from the Conservative Party, we have Ms. Kusie, followed by Mr. El-Khoury from the Liberal Party, Mr. Barsalou-Duval from the Bloc and Mr. Bachrach from the NDP.

Ms. Kusie, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for being here today.

My first question is for either witness.

Are there any outstanding concern papers for the recertification of this aircraft?

[David Turnbull]

No, there are not.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Turnbull.

Again, this question is for either Mr. Robinson or Mr. Turnbull: Was there any external pressure to recertify the aircraft from either the airlines or Boeing?

[Nicholas Robinson]

No, there was no external pressure to recertify either from Boeing or the three air operators that operate the aircraft in Canada.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Okay.

Once again to either of our witnesses, in your opinions, what parts of the original certification process for the Boeing MAX 8 do you think were flawed to allow the aircraft to be certified despite safety concerns?

I'm asking about the original certification process, not the aircraft itself but the process.

[David Turnbull]

From my perspective, the process could have been better in respect to the knowledge that the FAA had of the functionality that was introduced with the MAX. I'm primarily speaking of MCAS, the manoeuvring characteristics augmentation system. The MCAS was a system that was introduced for a specific purpose. It was added on in another flight mode to meet a similar purpose, but in doing so, some of the protection mechanisms that were originally envisaged were not included, and that was either not known or not communicated by the FAA. There seemed to have been a communication breakdown between Boeing and the FAA in that regard.

When we came along to do the validation, we investigated as part of our inquiry the existence of MCAS, but the full functionality of MCAS was not disclosed to us. Therefore, clearly there was an information breakdown in the process between Boeing and the FAA, which we ended up getting caught up in when we came to do our validation. That's the main concern.

There are other areas as well, which we'll be covering, moving forward, in respect to going back and looking at some of the certification policies, practices and processes that we feel were not followed appropriately, one of the most prominent ones being the application of what we call the “changed product rule”, which determines the nature in which a modified product is certified. There were definitely some pitfalls in there that we have to learn from, and we are going to be working with the FAA, which just introduced terms of reference to study that policy with the aim to tighten up some of the policy loopholes, you could call them, that were taken advantage of to allow, say, a less than full investigation of the changes to the product.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Okay. Thank you, Chair.

Then indicating, as Mr. Robinson did, that Transport Canada has its own independent process from the FAA, further to that last response, you'd say that Transport Canada has made significant changes to the certification process after having gone through this process with the recertification of the Boeing MAX.

[David Turnbull]

In terms of our process, not really. I think I mentioned at the previous committee that if you're speaking of the validation process as opposed to the role of being the state of design or the prime certifier, which I assume is what you're referring to, our process is scalable in that we can increase our involvement or increase our level of scrutiny depending on the circumstances of the particular project. There's no question that our level of review of the 737 MAX since the accidents has been significantly stepped up. Obviously, when we have two tragic accidents and there is a need to investigate, that level of scrutiny goes up.

Moving forward, we've instigated some increased communication protocols with our international partners. One of the silver linings, if you could say of such a tragic series of events, is that we are communicating more frequently, and shall I say, less formally, which we found quite effective. The weekly meetings that we were having throughout the return-to-service campaign have become a habit. It has allowed us to communicate and we will be using it to communicate more informally and more frequently, moving forward, so that's a real plus.

I'm not sure I covered your whole question.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

What I'm hearing is that your approach in terms of re-evaluating the certification changed. You feel it's become more communicative, but in the bigger picture you don't feel that this certification process has changed, in general, for Transport Canada.

[David Turnbull]

Not in any structural way...no. There hasn't been any specific component or aspect of our validation process that needs any significant change, but that said, clearly there are going to be other versions or derivatives of the 737 family coming up. We're already aware of those. There's no question, given the events and the history and the lessons learned, that we will be spending more resources looking at the next derivative than we normally would have. That fits into the scalability of our validation project process.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Turnbull.

Thank you, Ms. Kusie.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, witnesses.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

We're now going to move on to Mr. El-Khoury.

Mr. El-Khoury, you have the floor for six minutes.