Evidence of meeting #6 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was transport.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Paul Njoroge  Representative, Victim Families of Ethiopian 302, As an Individual
Chris Moore  Representative, Victim Families of Ethiopian 302, As an Individual
Clerk of the Committee  Mr. Michael MacPherson
Rob Giguere  Chief Executive Officer, Air Canada Pilots Association
Tim Perry  President, Air Line Pilots Association Canada, Air Line Pilots Association, International
Jordan Bray-Stone  Chairperson, Health and Safety Committee, Airline Division, Canadian Union of Public Employees
Gilles Primeau  Professional Engineer, As an Individual

3:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Vance Badawey

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number six 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 September 23, 2020. 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.

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 a 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 video conference, please click on the microphone icon to unmute yourself. For those in the room, microphones will be controlled as normal by the proceedings and verification officer.

I will give a reminder that all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair.

When you are not speaking, your microphone should be on mute.

With regard to a speaking list, the committee clerk and I will do the best we can to maintain the order of speaking that has been agreed upon by all members, whether you are participating virtually or in person.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the committee is meeting today to continue its study on the aircraft certification process.

With that, we have heard in the past a great deal of testimony. Although words alone can never express our sorrow to those who lost their lives and their families, please recognize our most sincere sympathies to those who were affected.

May I now welcome our witnesses. For the first round, we have, from the victim families of Ethiopian flight 302, Chris Moore and Paul Njoroge.

Gentlemen, you both have five minutes to speak, and then we will have questions from our committee members. That will take us into the hour.

I'm not sure whether it is going to be Paul or Chris who is going to go first.

Paul, are you going first?

November 24th, 2020 / 3:35 p.m.

Paul Njoroge Representative, Victim Families of Ethiopian 302, As an Individual

Yes, I will go first.

3:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Vance Badawey

Okay, my friend. The floor is yours.

3:35 p.m.

Representative, Victim Families of Ethiopian 302, As an Individual

Paul Njoroge

Thank you very much. I'm going to proceed.

Thank you, Chairman and members of the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities.

My name is Paul Njoroge. I'm the husband of Carolyne Karanja; father of Ryan Njoroge, Kellie Pauls and Rubi Pauls; and son-in-law of Anne Karanja, who all died in the crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 on March 10, last year.

The tragic death of my family left me in a chasm of solitude, desolation and pain. It changed the lives of my and my wife’s extended families, acquaintances and communities. Young children at St. Joseph Elementary School in Hamilton, Ontario, and friends of Ryan and Kellie, developed a fear of flying.

I'm here today because I believe that the crash that killed my family was preventable. Aviation regulators across the world were not diligent enough in their dispensing of regulatory authority over the certification and validation of the 737 Max plane. Certainly, Canada would not have lost its 18 citizens and unknown numbers of permanent residents had Transport Canada made prudent decisions after the crash of Lion Air flight 610.

Over the last 20 months, a lot has been documented about what affected the design, manufacturing and certification of the 737 Max. A lot more was documented on the FAA’s and Boeing’s acts, omissions and errors that culminated in these tragedies.

My testimony today will not delve into these technicalities. I have provided links to relevant reports in the footnotes of this oral testimony and in the longer version provided for your record.

It is perplexing that agencies across the world became aware of the Boeing and FAA shenanigans after the first crash but still allowed the plane to continue flying. Transport Canada allowed the plane to continue transporting Canadians across the globe. The directorate issued a five-step memory aid for pilots a few days after the first crash. However, in December of 2018, the FAA’s TARAM report predicted that 15 more 737 Max crashes would occur within the lifetime of the airplane. Wasn’t that a concern enough for the Minister of Transport to consider grounding the plane? Eighteen Canadians and unknown numbers of Canadian permanent residents lost their lives in the second crash because of this oversight.

On March 11 last year, a day after the crash of ET302, the Transport Minister appeared on TV and stressed his confidence in the 737 Max, saying that he would board the plane “without hesitation”.

The minister waited for four days before grounding the plane. Mr. Garneau's remarks and actions portrayed excessive hubris, analogous to the behaviour exhibited by many within the FAA and Boeing before and after the 737 Max crashes.

I may not fully understand the bilateral agreement between Canada and the U.S. with respect to aircraft validation, but I'm inclined to think that Transport Canada depended too much on what was decided and documented by the FAA and Boeing. Transport Canada acted like a mere rubber-stamping authority in the validation of the 737 Max planes.

When ET302 crashed, the Prime Minister reacted with one tweet of his thoughts being with the families of the victims, but when Ukraine Airlines flight 752 crashed on January of this year, he humanly appeared extensively on the media and condemned the Iranian government for shooting down the plane. Why didn't the PM demand accountability and thorough investigation of the 737 Max planes? Could it be that he was already aware of the 737 Max issues, but left uninformed Canadians like me to put their families in those flying coffins?

The FAA announced the ungrounding of the 737 Max last week. I believe that the plane is still unsafe to fly. The inherent aerodynamic structural flaws were completely ignored by Boeing and the FAA. The plane is still unstable.

In cases where the MCAS shuts off, pilots are the redundancy expected to turn the manual trim wheel. In the case of flight ET302, this proved to be difficult in scenarios where the aircraft is nosediving at high speed. The plane is still installed with an older flight crew alert system, which produces a cacophony of different alerts that can confuse pilots.

The 737 Max design, certification, validation and ungrounding story is a convoluted web of lies, greed, deceit and concealment of information.

Transport Canada has assured Canadians that the 737 Max will not fly in Canada until their independent validation process is completed. This validation process needs to be redefined, as it failed to consider the 2016 and 2018 concerns of the Canadian test pilots. Mr. Chairman, I have provided this committee with copies of those concerns.

Improvement of this validation process should start with an independent inquiry into decision-making by the transport ministerand Transport Canada, both before and after the 737 Max crashes. Canadians deserve a competent and transparent process.

Thank you for allowing me to speak today.

3:40 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Vance Badawey

Thank you, Mr. Njoroge.

We're now going to move on to Mr. Moore.

Mr. Moore, the floor is yours.

3:40 p.m.

Chris Moore Representative, Victim Families of Ethiopian 302, As an Individual

Mr. Chair and other members of this committee, we are here today to call for an independent inquiry into Transport Canada's validation of the Boeing 737 Max. Because our government didn't fully understand what they were validating, Transport Canada was essentially rubber-stamping a doomed plane. Eighteen Canadians perished, and our government shrugged.

I want to begin this testimony by stating that I am speaking on behalf of the family of Danielle Moore, my daughter, whose life was snuffed out after flight ET302 crashed into a farmer's field in Ethiopia. She was on her way to the United Nations Environment Assembly, representing Canada through a federal government youth program. Her loss will always remain a devastating shock to her family and friends. Her death has left a gaping hole in Canada's sustainability communities.

Danielle lived her life full of hope and believed in creating great change for a more just and environmentally sustainable planet. In her 24 years, she touched the lives of countless people across Canada and around the world. She was a courageous leader, champion for justice and environmental activist always keen to carry the hard work of sustainability forward. Although she accomplished so much in her life, she had so much more left to give. My daughter was one of 346 incredible people who lost their lives because of political expediency, broken government regulations and criminal negligence.

On October 29, 2018, Flight JT610 crashed into the Java Sea due to a number of factors documented in the final congressional committee report on the Boeing 737 Max. Consider this scenario. If the FAA qualified the flight controls plan for the Max, stating that the hazard category may be catastrophic but Boeing was working on a fix, would Transport Canada validate the plane? I think the answer is no, because it would not be airworthy. We need to know why Canada issued only a memory aid when they didn't even understand what they validated.

Canadians have a right to know why Transport Canada issued a concern letter about the anti-stall system before the crash but didn't use their authority to take effective action when they stated that they did not agree with the FAA interpretation.

Certification should have been deemed null and void. There was no redundancy or fail-safe mechanism for a critical system that resulted in the deaths of our loved ones. Did any engineer recommend grounding the plane? Did Canadian and American authorities feel superior in their knowledge and downplay the Lion Air crash because it occurred in a developing country? Would Canada have grounded the Max if the crash had happened in Canada?

There was enough data, information and evidence to ground the plane after the first Max crash. In fact, after the airworthiness directive was issued following the first crash, the FAA performed an analysis, which concluded that if left uncorrected, the MCAS design flaw in the Max could result in as many as 15 future fatal crashes or 3,000 deaths over the life of this fleet.

Transport Canada cannot in good conscience defend their lack of action by saying they might have grounded the plane in hindsight. They neglect to acknowledge the first crash. Boeing and the aviation agencies had six years to get it right. However, flight crews only had four seconds to diagnose the problem and to take action.

Furthermore, the minister's response to Canadian operators followed the FAA in lockstep, but modified it to a memory aid for simplicity. He knew the crew needed more time to react. Since the minister prides himself on making decisions based on facts and data, we demand to see the risk analysis he used to support his issuance of a memory aid in lieu of grounding the plane in Canada.

Like the appointment of the FAA administrator, the appointment of the Minister of Transport in Canada is political. Safety directives should be recommended and implemented by those who know the technical information best, and not for political optics. Safety should be apolitical. Was there any discussion whatsoever within Transport Canada regarding the grounding of the Max? Transport Canada's process of safeguarding travellers must conform to its mission statement.

The minister did not even follow his own tenet of action based on data after the first crash because he did not fully understand what his own department validated. The validation was premature. This evasion of facts and complicity with the United States was further evident after the second crash. Two days after 18 Canadians were killed on this plane, the minister doubled down on his position by stating he would board a Boeing 737 “without hesitation”. This was one day after he said that he doesn't want to make any premature decisions. His actions do not match his words; they match industry's objectives.

On behalf of my daughter and the concerned flying public, we demand that the actions taken by Canada's transport minister and civil aviation agency be examined as they pertain to validation and continuous operational safety of the Max. Only a thorough independent inquiry can achieve this.

Thank you.

I look forward to your questions.

3:45 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Vance Badawey

Thank you, Mr. Moore.

We now have our first round of questions of six minutes each. I have Ms. Kusie first, followed by Mr. El-Khoury, Mr. Barsalou-Duval and then Mr. Bachrach.

Ms. Kusie, the floor is yours.

3:45 p.m.

Conservative

Stephanie Kusie Conservative Calgary Midnapore, AB

Thank you very much, Chair.

First if all, I want to express my heartfelt and sincere condolences to the victims' families—

3:45 p.m.

The Clerk of the Committee Mr. Michael MacPherson

Hold on. We're going to have to interrupt there. We're going to have to interrupt.

3:45 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Vance Badawey

Go ahead.

3:45 p.m.

The Clerk

The sound quality is really not good there.

Maybe you could move the microphone away from your mouth a little bit. We're just getting a lot of popping, and the sound levels are fluctuating greatly.

3:45 p.m.

Conservative

Stephanie Kusie Conservative Calgary Midnapore, AB

I can hear the popping as well as I'm speaking. Is that any better now?

3:45 p.m.

The Clerk

No, unfortunately. The interpreters are not going to be able to provide interpretation with that sound quality. Sorry.

3:45 p.m.

Liberal

Churence Rogers Liberal Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL

Mr. Chair, is everybody else on mute? That makes a difference.

3:45 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Vance Badawey

Everybody's on mute but myself.

It looks like Ms. Kusie may have frozen up.

3:45 p.m.

Conservative

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

Chair, can I make a suggestion? I was supposed to go on second round. Could I do the five minutes now, and Ms. Kusie can have the six?

3:45 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Vance Badawey

That's fine, Mr. Shipley. Why don't we go with that?

3:50 p.m.

Conservative

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

I'm not trying to bump her, but we have no idea when she.... We can wait. It's up to the chair.

Is she back?

3:50 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Vance Badawey

Are you back?

3:50 p.m.

Conservative

Stephanie Kusie Conservative Calgary Midnapore, AB

No, something is clearly wrong with the network application, so Mr. Shipley is going to go first. I will try to remediate this and join afterward.

I apologize to the team. I will excuse myself and hopefully rejoin shortly.

3:50 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Vance Badawey

Okay, thank you, Ms. Kusie.

Mr. Shipley, you have six minutes.

3:50 p.m.

Conservative

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

Okay. Just to be fair, though, because we all have our things prepared, is it okay if I do five minutes this round and Ms. Kusie can do six the next round?

3:50 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Vance Badawey

That would be fine.

3:50 p.m.

Conservative

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

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to Mr. Moore and to Mr. Njoroge for being here today.

The first thing I'm going to say to both you gentlemen here is that in your heartfelt speeches, you thanked us. Please, you don't need to thank us whatsoever. We're here doing our job. It's you we need to thank for being here. Your stories are heartbreaking. As a father and as a husband, I find it heartbreaking to hear your stories.

Being new to the committee, I'm not completely familiar with all the background. Obviously I want to pass on my sincere condolences. This has obviously changed your lives forever. As much as you can try to put it behind you, I can hear that in your hearts you won't be able to, but please at least know that through this committee, we can try to get some resolution and some thought of at least some closure for you. That's why we're here today.

Again, thank you for being here. Please do not thank us; we're here for you.

I have some questions, but I actually don't want to ask questions. I want to give as much of my time as I can to Mr. Moore and Mr. Njoroge to speak more, because it's really their stories we want to hear.

I heard from both of the gentlemen that they had serious issues with the validation process for this plane and the Transport Canada letter that was put out. “Certification should have been deemed null and void” was one of the quotes.

Mr. Njoroge or Mr. Moore, whoever wants to go first, I'm going to give you a lot of time and leave the floor to you. Would you like to add some more comments as to how this has impacted your life and what you would like to see as an outcome? What are you looking to come out of this committee?

3:50 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Vance Badawey

Mr. Moore, go ahead.