Today [March 10] is the one-year anniversary of the Ethiopian air crash, which claimed 157 lives including 18 Canadians. Four months earlier [October 2019] the Lion Air crash in Indonesia killed 189 passengers and crew. Both crashes involved Boeing's 737 Max 8 aircraft.The Boeing 737 Max 8 was a modification of the earlier version of the aircraft. The plane was equipped with anti-stall software, called MCAS, to address the consequences of heavier engines placed higher on the plane which increased the risk of stall during take-off.In both crashes, a faulty sensor in the nose of the plane caused the anti-stall software [MCAS] to malfunction causing both planes, despite pilot efforts, to plummet to earth. The aircraft had only one sensor in the plane's nose instead of the usual two; a deadly mistake.The Ethiopian investigation team interim report released yesterday, March 9, focused on the 737 Max design flaws that doomed the crash.Behind this immediate cause is a story of corporate negligence and regulatory failure. Both were the violent consequence of regulatory capture, a situation in which the regulated industry gains control of a compliant regulator subverting its primary mission of public safety.The US Congressional committee reportThe US House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's preliminary report, released four days earlier, concluded that Federal Aviation Administration [FAA] oversight was fundamentally flawed and in “critical need of legislative and regulatory reforms.”Over the years, the FAA had outsourced more and more regulatory functions to Boeing itself. It granted to Boeing employees permission to act on the agency's behalf including certifying the plane for flying—classic self-regulationIntense competition with Airbus led to Boeing prioritizing costs at the expense of safety. Boeing had guaranteed its customers it would require no additional pilot training, thus saving expensive costs for the airlines.The FAA not only failed to designate MCAS as a safety-critical system, it approved Boeing's demand to remove all references to the stall prevention software's existence in the operating manual; and to concur that no simulator training for pilots was necessary. Identifying with the priorities of industry—a classic element of regulatory capture—FAA senior management overruled the assessment of its vulnerability by the FAA's own technical experts at the request of Boeing.The US House Committee report was in sharp contrast to the report commissioned by Department of Transport Secretary Elaine Chao, which found that the FAA's approval process was “rigorous and robust” “safe and effective." Regulatory capture existed the highest political levels.The responseIn the days following the Lion Air crash, both the FAA and Boeing continued for months to hide the existence of the aircraft's MCAS software in their pilot advisories.The FAA did however produce a risk assessment which calculated that if MCAS system were not repaired, there would be an estimated 15 more catastrophic accidents during the 30-year lifetime of the 737 Max fleet— a finding that was not widely shared outside the agency.In CanadaHours after the Ethiopian Air crash, governments around the world began grounding the 737 Max.  Canada was not among them. Transport Minister Garneau and his officials were awaiting the US lead.Transport Canada had outsourced the bulk of its regulatory responsibilities to the FAA and by extension to Boeing itself. Regulatory capture had infected the Canadian regulator as well.Under the Transport Canada-FAA arrangement, the U.S. regulator certified the plane first, then Canada cleared the 737 Max to fly based on material provided by the FAA, though did not scrutinize the plane directly. It was essentially a bookkeeping exercise, another classic feature of regulatory capture.Appearing before of the House of Commons Transport Committee on February 25, David Turnbull, Director of National Aircraft Certification at Transport Canada, testify: “We have faith and trust in the FAA, but we will investigate independently to determine and validate [and later] “This is a situation where we learn and have learned about failure modes of the MCAS, how it relates to the basic architecture of the airplane.” After the fact rationalization?Three weeks after the Lion Air crash, Transport Canada was provided with the grim FAA analysis of the danger the 737 Max posed unless there was a fix to MCAS software. And yet it chose not to ground the plane in advance of its US counterpart.Immediately after the Ethiopian crash [on March 11] Garneau insisted it would be premature to ground the plane despite this foreknowledge. Two days later [on March 13] Transport Minister Garneau grounded the Max 8— just hours before the US—stating that new information had come to his attention “suggesting a possible, although unproven, similarity” between the two flight paths. What was this new information?The Globe and Mail reported flight information collected by two radar data companies—available in real-time—showed a disturbingly similar pattern between the two crashes. One of these companies, Aireon, is partially owned by Nav Canada, Canada's air-traffic control system. But Canadian officials did not request this information for three days. Why did it wait so long? Why was Garneau waiting for the US lead?The month following the Ethiopian air crash [April 2019], the House of Commons Transport and Infrastructure Committee—under a majority Liberal government— rejected a motion to study Transport Canada's role in greenlighting the 737 Max. A year later—now under minority government— the same committee, in an about-face, decided to proceed with an investigation.Regulatory capture pervades Canada's regulatory system. I demonstrated in my book on the Lac-Mégantic disaster how it pervaded the rail sector. Others have shown its prevalence in pesticides, pharmaceuticals, food safety and other sectors.A parliamentary committee hearing, while important, is only a first step. A Commission of Inquiry is necessary to undertake a comprehensive examination of a regulatory capture in all of its manifestations, across all sectors—and its remedies.The power of industry over Canadian regulators is one element of what Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul termed a slow-motion corporate coup d'état. Regulatory capture poses a serious risk to public health and safety and the environment. Contrary to Michael Ignatieff's contention that obfuscation of the truth is a "necessary hypocrisy" for the functioning of liberal democracy, uncovering the truth is in fact critical for the health of our democracy.Bruce Campbell is adjunct professor, York University, Faculty of Environmental Studies; Senior fellow, Ryerson University Centre for Free Expression; author of: The Lac-Mégantic Rail Disaster: Public Betrayal Justice Denied, James Lorimer, 2018; former Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.