Inside the 72 hours while Canada debated grounding the Boeing MAX-8
Boeing 737 MAX-8 jets in March 2019, staff at his department prepared three very different speeches.They outlined three different scenarios: restricting the aircraft from Canadian airspace, as many countries already had, declaring the MAX-8 safe to fly, as the Americans did, or allowing the aircraft to operate “only if certain standards were met.”The speeches are part of a newly released trove of internal documents on the federal government’s decision to ground the Boeing jets following a deadly 2019 crash in Ethiopia that killed 18 Canadians.Next month marks the fifth anniversary of the disaster.It’s not unusual for staff to draft multiple versions of speeches for ministers. But the fact that each of Garneau’s three prepared remarks contained vastly different decisions on the grounding of the MAX-8 illustrates the uncertainty at Transport Canada over the jets’ safety.Emails, memos and briefing notes obtained by Global News through access to information law show three days of flurried activity at Transport Canada as the agency’s position continuously evolved.
While Canadian officials worked around the clock to conduct their own safety review of the aircraft, they were largely in lockstep with the FAA, an agency under scrutiny for how it conducted safety reviews of U.S.-based Boeing jets.And as the American-headquartered company faces questions about its MAX-8, and more recently MAX-9 jets, the documents also raise questions about how Transport Canada makes calls when it comes to which aircraft operate in Canadian skies.On March 10, 2019, an Ethiopian Airlines flight went down six minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa, killing 157 people, including the 18 Canadians. It was the second deadly crash involving a new Boeing
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