Transport committee  I have no opening remarks. We're ready to get into questions. Thank you.

Transport committee  No, there are not.

Transport committee  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.

Transport committee  Thank you for the question. I'd like to say the good news is that the fundamental processes we've had in place and we've refined over the years do not need to change. The process itself is scalable. What I mean by that is that our validation efforts can adapt to the situation, just as they have throughout the validation of the design changes.

Transport committee  We are not certifying products in isolation of commercial realities. We have to take into account when certain manufacturers want to sell and operate their aircraft. Even for a certification program that would start and last five to six years, which, for example, was the case with the C Series certified in Canada, we were always working to a target date that was specified by the applicant.

Transport committee  Clearly, again, nobody is denying that there wasn't something missed. The ICAO regulations and signing up to an ICAO convention, which started in 1939, clearly states the responsibility of the state of design. I think the U.S. is going through what it needs to go through to investigate what happened.

Transport committee  Things have changed in which regard? I'm sorry.

Transport committee  Thank you. Just to add to what Mr. Robinson was saying, because of our due diligence and our very careful investigation, it was Transport Canada that discovered the original simulators used for training were not programmed to actually allow the pilots to exercise and carry out the procedures associated with the runaway stabilizer events.

Transport committee  Yes. I think Mr. Primeau has the credentials, and we could speak intelligently with him on a number of levels, among them the technical level; there was no question. However, Mr. Primeau was misinformed on a few items and we did correct him on some of the issues as we spoke to him.

Transport committee  It is of course his privilege to have that opinion. It's unfortunate, however. Without disrespecting Mr. Primeau's credentials, to be fair, he has not been privy to the literally thousands of hours that my team has put into investigating, in explicit detail, the failure modes and the system as it failed, and how we have developed in collaboration with the FAA a series of fixes.

Transport committee  No, I do not. I greatly regret what has happened and huge sympathies go out to the families, obviously, with these tragic accidents. I stand before you today being fully confident that we made the right decision with the information that we had. We did do our usual due diligence through our normal tried and true validation process that we've applied to many foreign aircraft.

Transport committee  Respectfully, you are, actually. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to revisit this because I did not complete my explanation with Ms. Kusie earlier. What is raised in that concern paper was a question to help us understand the methodology whereby Boeing has demonstrated compliance to a particular requirement.

Transport committee  Obviously after the accidents, it was certainly a huge preoccupation of ours. In doing our original validation through 2016, we did inquire about the MCAS system. We were made aware of its functioning, but unfortunately, at the time we were not provided with a full explanation of its functionality.

Transport committee  Thank you for your question. As you mentioned, Mr. Barsalou-Duval, we met and spoke with both of the individuals more than once, I believe, and were thoroughly briefed on their questions. They brought up some very good points. In general, I'd have to say that we did investigate those questions that we were not able to answer on the spot, but many we did.

Transport committee  The answer is yes. I believe one of the recommendations, as you briefly described.... It has an influence on what we call the changed product rule, which indicates to us, when a product is modified, to what extent the entire system has to be re-evaluated. This is one of the key recommendations of the JATR report, and the re-examination of the interpretation of that particular regulation, in terms of how we certify and establish standards for modified products, is one of the key investigations or activities that we will carry out in a joint fashion with our other airworthiness authority partners moving forward.