Transport Committee on Feb. 16th, 2021

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

You didn't really answer my question any more than you did when I asked whether you would certify the same aircraft had it been manufactured in Canada.

I really can't understand how Canada deems acceptable aircraft that are less safe than those produced by Boeing's competitors. Is it that Canadian travellers don't deserve to fly on the safest aircraft possible?

All of this comes down to the fact that the aircraft is outdated. It's had the same system, or at least the same certification, for 50 years.

Don't you think it's a problem to have an aircraft that is constantly being grandfathered in?

[David Turnbull]

With respect, Mr. Barsalou-Duval, I don't believe your assertions are quite accurate. The 737 MAX, yes, is a derivative model with a lot of history, but it has yet again been shown to meet the design, the safety standard. There are many aircraft out there flying right now that have a perfectly safe record and were certified 30, 40 or 50 years ago.

Again, the exercise with the 737 MAX was to re-evaluate the design as it was proposed by Boeing and to determine once and for all whether the design changes completely and thoroughly mitigated the concerns and the failure modes that were realized in the accidents. That job has been complete. At this point to say that it is an unsafe aircraft would not be consistent with the conclusions we've drawn that allowed it to go back into service.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Turnbull, and thank you, Mr. Barsalou-Duval. We're now going to move on to Mr. Bachrach for two and a half minutes.

Mr. Bachrach, the floor is yours.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to ask some questions stemming from my recent Order Paper question and the response that I received from Transport Canada.

In it, your department indicated that.... We know the Lion Air crash occurred on October 9, and that nine days following the crash, there was a telephone call between the FAA and Transport Canada in which the FAA told Transport Canada that the MCAS caused the Lion Air crash and that a software fix would be forthcoming soon. Why, with that information in hand, did Transport Canada not move to immediately ground the aircraft until there was a fix in place?

[Nicholas Robinson]

Thank you for that question. What I can say is, at that point, conversations with the FAA started right away after the aircraft accident of Lion Air, just like it would with other accidents that occurred. I'll even refer to an accident that occurred for another 737 variant model just a number of months ago. Right away, we were speaking to the FAA with regard to what they knew about the aircraft.

You were mentioning that short time frame. What I can say is that within that short time frame, and actually on November 8, Transport Canada moved forward unilaterally—we were the only civil aviation authority to do so—to change criteria for crews to ensure they were aware of the key steps to address a runaway trim stabilizer condition. That occurred on November 8, and that was the first immediate action that we undertook to start to address an issue that we saw and were aware of. We worked with our air operators and aircrews to establish that, and then we continued to speak with the FAA to fully understand the accident.

As you can imagine, during an accident there are preliminary reports, but there is a great deal of information that has to come out to understand where the accident...and what caused the accident. We were satisfied at the time that the quick, unilateral actions that Canada took, which were in place by November 8, started to address that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Robinson.

Thank you, Mr. Bachrach.

Members, we're now going to move on to our third round.... I'm sorry; we're at the end of the second round. I don't have anybody marked down from the Conservative Party here.

Mr. Shipley, you're targeted for the third round, position five.

I'm going to ask if either Mr. Shipley or another member from the CPC wants to take this slot, because you do have five minutes.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Sorry, Mr. Chair. You caught me a bit there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

I apologize. I should have given you a heads-up before Taylor. I didn't catch it until now. You can have it, or if any other member of your party would like to take it, it is an open slot.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Maybe we can just bump ours up as we go. Who was next in our rotation? Was it Mr. Kram?

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Let me just check here. That's correct; it was Mr. Kram.

Doug, the only reason I threw it at you was just in case we didn't get to you, because time is running out and you're the last one on the list. Mr. Kram is the first one for the third round.

It's up to you guys.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Quite frankly, Chair, when you said three rounds, I was fourth, so I don't have a lot prepared right now. I'm sure Mr. Kram is a lot more prepared than I am. You really caught me today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

No problem.

Michael, do you want to take it?

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Yes, Mr. Chair, I will. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

It's all yours. You have the floor for five minutes.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Mr. Robinson and Mr. Turnbull, welcome back to the committee. I realize that you've had certainly a lot of work over the last two years. I was very glad to hear that there are no outstanding concern papers left on the MAX 8.

However, in the past, there were outstanding concern papers, in particular with respect to the MCAS. Can the witnesses describe for the committee what changes were made to the MCAS while the plane was grounded that led to the MCAS concern paper being resolved?

[David Turnbull]

I'd like to redirect the question a little.

The concern paper that was referred to and discussed at previous committees was not specifically related to MCAS. It was our investigation of the stall characteristics of the airplane to determine the basic dependency of the aircraft on systems, such as MCAS but also other aspects that comprise the stall identification system, to determine whether the aircraft had inherent natural stall characteristics. In other words, does the aircraft require systems to intervene to protect it from stalls? At the end of that exchange, we concluded, thankfully so, that the aircraft does not.

Yes, that issue paper was open, and it was eventually closed with the result we had expected to confirm—that MCAS was not required to maintain a stable aircraft.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

In a broader sense, could you walk us through what changes were made to the MCAS system that led it from being unsafe to being safe?

[David Turnbull]

I believe I covered that in one of my previous answers. I'll just summarize it again.

The ability for MCAS to fire has been protected. There are more inputs required than were in existence in the previous design. The system is only allowed to fire once per flight, where in the accident situations it was firing repeatedly. The authority that the MCAS has to drive the nose down has been scaled back such that, even if it did malfunction, it is now within the pilot's full ability to recover and overcome those aerodynamic forces.

There are comparative features or cross-checks between the two AOA sensors. If they're out by a certain difference between the two of them, it will kill the input and prevent the MCAS from firing. Finally, the electric trim switch on the control column, if applied by the pilot, will immediately engage the MCAS, which in the previous situation it did not.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

That's very good.

Mr. Robinson, you described in your opening statement that there would be new flight crew training for the MAX 8. Can you share with the committee what new training is now in place?

[Nicholas Robinson]

Absolutely.

In a discussion by my colleague David, he mentioned one of the key things. One of the unique changes we had was the ability for crew to pull a circuit breaker to help alleviate some of the workload issues that are found within the cockpit. If we have that procedure as an option to flight crew, we have to train against it. We have to make sure that the crew are ready, they understand and they know how to move forward to address that circuit breaker pull. That's one of the crew procedures that we've put in place.

There were also some negative training elements that we found, “negative training” meaning that it prevented individuals in other failure scenarios from taking and using the systems that were available to them. We looked at the curriculum and removed particularly a negative training element with regard to the trim switch.

Those are the key procedural changes we made that were unique to Canada's approval.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Could the witnesses, in lay terms, walk the committee through how the certification process will be different for the next aircraft that applies to Transport Canada?

[Nicholas Robinson]

There are two pieces there, and it is very important.

When Transport Canada certifies an aircraft, that's a Canadian-made product. That's a Canadian manufacturer coming to us for an initial-type certification for a product. That wasn't the case here. We were a validating authority.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Okay.

[Nicholas Robinson]

From a certification component—and we've explained in a few of the responses we've had—we believe our certification approach in Canada is very sound. We have very strong oversight and a very strong relationship with our manufacturers. I don't believe that certification approach is called into question here.

From a validating authority perspective, that's what we were in with the Boeing 737 MAX. We've explained that what happened here was that there was a withholding of information with regard to the full impact of a particular system on an aircraft. In this validation approach we're speaking about now that concluded back in December of this year—to my colleague Dave's point—what we did was we turned up the level of input and the level of involvement so that we were able to fully come to an understanding that when we validated this aircraft we both could say, and Transport Canada could say, that all of our safety concerns are addressed.

We worked with the FAA and other aviation authorities to ensure that the systems that were previously mischaracterized, withheld and not explained fully, were done this time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Robinson, and thank you, Mr. Kram.

We're now going to move on to Mr. Rogers of the Liberal party for five minutes.

Mr. Rogers, the floor is yours.