Canada’s decision to ground Boeing’s 737 MAX-8 jets in 2019 came as a result of a chance European encounter that led to new data about two deadly crashes, suggest documents obtained by Global News.
Canada was one of the last countries to ground the Boeing-MAX 8 after an Ethiopian Airlines disaster on March 10, 2019, killed 157 people, including 18 Canadians.
The tragedy followed a similar disaster involving the MAX-8 five months earlier off the coast of Indonesia, killing 189 people.
After days of frantic behind-the-scenes activity at Transport Canada, Ottawa eventually banned the American-made jets from Canadian skies on March 13. But newly-released documents obtained through access to information laws show the decision to ground the MAX-8s came just hours before the announcement, the result of what appeared to be a coincidental meeting that provided new data showing similarities between the two crashes.
Nearly 800 pages of internal government documents – including emails, briefings and memos – offer a window into the flurried 72 hours that led then-Transport Minister Marc Garneau to his decision.
Several considerations were being weighed by senior Transport Canada officials, the documents show, including the impact of grounding the MAX-8 on Canadian airlines, the position of airline unions, and a general lack of evidence linking the Indonesian and Ethiopian crashes.
In a March 12 email – less than 24 hours before Garneau banned the MAX-8 from Canadian airspace – a senior Transport Canada official said that after the Ethiopian disaster, “our world-class experts found no reason to ground the fleet.”
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“Need facts to act and we have no facts,” Aaron J. McCrorie, then in charge of safety and security at Transport Canada, wrote.
The facts would come nine hours later from an unlikely source.
According to the documents, two employees at NAV Canada – a non-profit corporation that runs Canada’s civil air navigation system – were attending a conference in Europe when they caught wind that the European Union grounded the MAX-8, based on data from a U.S.-based company called Aireon, which runs a global aircraft tracking surveillance system.
“Regarding how, when and to whom we got the satellite data… Nav Canada officials attending a conference in Europe realized that some of the data Aireon had could be of use to use,” wrote McCrorie in emails within the department explaining how the data came to light.
“Why did we only get that info yesterday morning? Simply that we did not know we could or would be provided the information. (This) is where Nav Canada (who was aware the information was available) played a key role in alerting us.”
The NAV Canada employees connected Aireon’s then-Vice President Cyriel Kronenburg with Transport Canada officials, who received the data around 6 a.m. Eastern on March 13.
“Attached you have the Ethiopian event and the Lion Air event … if you compare the two they have some similarities,” wrote François Collins, the director general of aircraft services at Transport Canada, in a 6:48 a.m. email.
Up to that point, Canadian officials did not believe there was evidence linking the two. Five hours later Garneau held a news conference and announced Canada was grounding the Boeing MAX-8 effective immediately.
Global News reported in February that the day before Garneau’s announcement, communications staff and senior officials at Transport Canada were working on three different speeches for the minister. One said that Transport Canada officials had found no reason to ban the MAX-8 from Canadian airspace. Another said that the aircraft would be permitted to enter and leave Canadian airports under certain conditions. The final speech – which Garneau ultimately gave on March 13 – grounded the MAX-8s immediately.
“My experts have looked at this (data) and compared it to the flight that occurred with Lion Air six months ago in October and there are — and I hasten to say — not conclusive, but there are similarities that sort of exceed a certain threshold in our mind,” he said at the time.
According to the documents, while Garneau and officials were making that decision, there were 16 MAX-8s flying into or out of Canadian airports. That included 13 operated by Air Canada, who told government officials that they were considering “voluntarily” grounding its fleet of Boeing jets before Garneau issued his order.
Ultimately, investigators found Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air crashes were connected, after identifying problems with Boeing’s anti-stall software known as MCAS. Flaws in some of the aircraft sensors forced the nose of the MAX-8s down, while pilots fought to right the jets.
The two crashes signalled the start of a safety crisis at Boeing that persists today.
In 2019, Garneau said the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had his full confidence. The FAA certified the Boeing MAX-8 and Canada accepted that certification. But a month later, Garneau said Transport Canada was changing the approval process, and would certify Boeing’s software fixes itself.
In 2021, after almost two years of grounding, Canada cleared the MAX-8 to fly again.
That same year, Boeing admitted to misleading American regulators and agreed to pay US$2.5 billion to settle with the U.S. Justice Department. The fine included compensation to the families of the Ethiopian Airlines crash victims.
But on Jan. 5, 2024, safety concerns over Boeing jets were sparked again, this time with the MAX-9 jet. The panel blew off an Alaska Airlines flight over Oregon, causing an emergency landing. No one was seriously injured.
Last March, a longtime Boeing employee who blew the whistle on the planemaker’s alleged lax safety standards was found dead in his car in South Carolina. The Charleston County Coroner’s Office told local media it appears he died from a self-inflicted wound.
Earlier this month, another Boeing employee told U.S. senators the company took shortcuts in a rush to produce as many 787 Dreamliners as possible.
“They are putting out defective airplanes,” the Boeing engineer, Sam Salehpour, told a Senate subcommittee.
The company says claims about the Dreamliner’s structural integrity are false.
Global News requested comment from Aireon, the company that provided the data to the Canadian government. A spokesperson said that Kronenburg no longer works with the company, and suggested reaching out to Transport Canada.
Global sent a list of questions to Transport Canada, including why the department didn’t proactively seek out the data, whether the department was aware such data existed, and whether or not the department has taken steps to access similar data more quickly in the event of future air disasters.
In a statement, the department did not address those questions. Instead, a Transport Canada spokesperson noted that the U.S. FAA “is the responsible civil aviation authority” for the Boeing jets involved in the crashes.
“Transport Canada continues to work closely with bilateral partners to ensure that the level of cooperation and sharing is in line with our mutual safety objectives,” the spokesperson wrote.
Nova Scotia RCMP say their investigation into two suspicious deaths earlier this month has concluded that one man died by homicide and the other by suicide.
The bodies of two men, aged 40 and 73, were found in a home in Windsor, N.S., on Sept. 3.
Police say the province’s medical examiner determined the 40-year-old man was killed and the 73-year-old man killed himself.
They say the two men were members of the same family.
No arrests or charges are anticipated, and the names of the deceased will not be released.
RCMP say they will not be releasing any further details out of respect for the family.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
For the first time in their history, members of the Cree community of Nemaska received a visit from a sitting Quebec premier on Sunday and were able to share first-hand the story of how they were displaced by a hydroelectric project in the 1970s.
François Legault was greeted in Nemaska by men and women who arrived by canoe to re-enact the founding of their new village in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay region, in northern Quebec, 47 years ago. The community was forced in the early 1970s to move from its original location because members were told it would be flooded as part of the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert hydro project.
The reservoir was ultimately constructed elsewhere, but by then the members of the village had already left for other places, abandoning their homes and many of their belongings in the process.
George Wapachee, co-author of the book “Going Home,” said community members were “relocated for nothing.”
“We didn’t know what the rights were, or who to turn to,” he said in an interview. “That turned us into refugees and we were forced to abandon the life we knew.”
Nemaska’s story illustrates the challenges Legault’s government faces as it looks to build new dams to meet the province’s power needs, which are anticipated to double by 2050. Legault has promised that any new projects will be developed in partnership with Indigenous people and have “social acceptability,” but experts say that’s easier said than done.
François Bouffard, an associate professor of electrical engineering at McGill University, said the earlier era of hydro projects were developed without any consideration for the Indigenous inhabitants living nearby.
“We live in a much different world now,” he said. “Any kind of hydro development, no matter where in Quebec, will require true consent and partnership from Indigenous communities.” Those groups likely want to be treated as stakeholders, he added.
Securing wider social acceptability for projects that significantly change the landscape — as hydro dams often do — is also “a big ask,” he said. The government, Bouchard added, will likely focus on boosting capacity in its existing dams, or building installations that run off river flow and don’t require flooding large swaths of land to create reservoirs.
Louis Beaumier, executive director of the Trottier Energy Institute at Polytechnique Montreal, said Legault’s visit to Nemaska represents a desire for reconciliation with Indigenous people who were traumatized by the way earlier projects were carried about.
Any new projects will need the consent of local First Nations, Beaumier said, adding that its easier to get their blessing for wind power projects compared to dams, because they’re less destructive to the environment and easier around which to structure a partnership agreement.
Beaumier added that he believes it will be nearly impossible to get the public — Indigenous or not — to agree to “the destruction of a river” for a new dam, noting that in recent decades people have come to recognize rivers as the “unique, irreplaceable riches” that they are.
Legault’s visit to northern Quebec came on Sept. 15, when the community gathers every year to remember the founding of the “New Nemaska,” on the shores of Lake Champion in the heart of the boreal forest, some 1,500 kilometres from Montreal. Nemaska Chief Clarence Jolly said the community invited Legault to a traditional feast on Sunday, and planned to present him with Wapachee’s book and tell him their stories.
The book, published in 2022 along with Susan Marshall, is filled with stories of Nemaska community members. Leaving behind sewing machines and hunting dogs, they were initially sent to two different villages, Wapachee said.
In their new homes, several of them were forced to live in “deplorable conditions,” and some were physically and verbally abused, he said. The new village of Nemaska was only built a few years later, in 1977.
“At this time, families were losing their children to prison-schools,” he said, in reference to the residential school system. “Imagine the burden of losing your community as well.”
Thomas Jolly, a former chief, said he was 15 years old when he was forced to leave his village with all his belongings in a single bag.
Meeting Legault was important “because have to recognize what happened and we have to talk about the repercussions that the relocation had on people,” he said, adding that those effects are still felt today.
Earlier Sunday, Legault was in the Cree community of Eastmain, where he participated in the official renaming of a hydro complex in honour of former premier Bernard Landry. At the event, Legault said he would follow the example of his late predecessor, who oversaw the signing of the historic “Paix des Braves” agreement between the Quebec government and the Cree in 2002.
He said there is “significant potential” in Eeyou Istchee James Bay, both in increasing the capacity of its large dams and in developing wind power projects.
“Obviously, we will do that with the Cree,” he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
NEMASKA – For the first time in their history, members of the Cree community of Nemaska received a visit from a sitting Quebec premier on Sunday and were able to share first-hand the story of how they were displaced by a hydroelectric project in the 1970s.
François Legault was greeted in Nemaska by men and women who arrived by canoe to re-enact the founding of their new village in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay region, in northern Quebec, 47 years ago. The community was forced in the early 1970s to move from their original location because they were told it would be flooded as part of the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert hydro project.
The reservoir was ultimately constructed elsewhere, but by then the members of the village had already left for other places, abandoning their homes and many of their belongings in the process.
George Wapachee, co-author of the book “Going Home,” said community members were “relocated for nothing.”
“We didn’t know what the rights were, or who to turn to,” he said in an interview. “That turned us into refugees and we were forced to abandon the life we knew.”
The book, published in 2022 by Wapachee and Susan Marshall, is filled with stories of Cree community members. Leaving behind sewing machines and hunting dogs, they were initially sent to two different villages, 100 and 300 kilometres away, Wapachee said.
In their new homes, several of them were forced to live in “deplorable conditions,” and some were physically and verbally abused, he said. The new village of Nemaska was only built a few years later, in 1977.
“At this time, families were losing their children to prison-schools,” he said, in reference to the residential school system. “Imagine the burden of losing your community as well.”
Legault’s visit came on Sept. 15, when the community gathers every year to remember the founding of the “New Nemaska,” on the shores of Lake Champion in the heart of the boreal forest, some 1,500 kilometres from Montreal. Nemaska Chief Clarence Jolly said the community invited Legault to a traditional feast on Sunday, and planned to present him with Wapachee’s book and tell him their stories.
Thomas Jolly, a former chief, said he was 15 years old when he was forced to leave his village with all his belongings in a single bag.
Meeting Legault was important “because have to recognize what happened and we have to talk about the repercussions that the relocation had on people,” he said, adding that those effects are still felt today.
Earlier Sunday, Legault had been in the Cree community of Eastmain, where he participated in the official renaming of a hydro dam in honour of former premier Bernard Landry.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
