National Defence Committee on April 29th, 2024

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Ms. Mathyssen, go ahead for six minutes, please.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you so much for appearing before us today.

When the Canadian space division was first announced in 2022, you informed the media that you wanted to reach the personnel level dedicated to the division of 270 CAF members.

There's been a ton of focus, of course rightly so, on recruitment and retention issues within the CAF and that other division that we're speaking about building up, the cyber force.

We've been hearing in this committee a lot about all of the things that the CAF need in order to be the strong force that they need to be. That's appropriate housing, affordable housing, a reasonable cost of living—you name it.

As these responsibilities and worries grow on CAF personnel related to all the things that I know the general population in Canada also worries about, can you talk about getting to that 270 mark—how you've done it, how you want to continue to do it and what the personnel needs are in your division to get to that 270 mark?

[BGen Michael Adamson]

There are some elements of the question that I think I would best defer to our military personnel command in terms of looking at things like housing, benefits and recruitment and retention issues. Those are squarely within their lanes, and they've certainly got a lot of effort going into programs to try to address all of those.

From a space division perspective, we are growing towards that 270 goal. We are unique insofar as none of the folks who work in the space division come directly off the street, so this isn't a recruiting issue. We typically take personnel who are already in the Canadian Armed Forces—the army, air force and the navy—because we are joint.

We'll bring them in and we will teach them what they need to know to be space operators. We'll retain them for the normal tour length of three or four years, and then they'll normally go back to wherever they came from with the idea that at some point, we'd bring that expertise back at the next rank level, and they would be future space leaders.

I'm not worried about recruiting off the street in that regard. Certainly when we look around the Canadian Armed Forces to find people who may be interested in coming to us, that is the number one question I get when I speak at town halls: “How do I get into the space organization?” It's absolutely fascinating for folks, and there's no shortage of potential applicants.

To that end, I am blessed that I have a workforce that is absolutely thrilled about doing what they do and that I can walk around the spaces for both 7 Wing and the division and run into people who are passionate about space and delivering those effects. It is really heartwarming for us.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Maybe it's not recruitment, but retention is certainly an issue, as well as the competition that we see from the private sector. Can you speak to that and the issues that you're having on that end?

[BGen Michael Adamson]

From our perspective, I don't see the retention issues within the space division, as I said, simply because I have a highly motivated and highly enthusiastic workforce.

Beyond that, in the larger CAF, again, that would probably be a question that would better be posed to our personnel command folks.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

One of the issues that we're also hearing a lot about that comes up a lot in re-examination is universality of service. Is there a potential to re-examine that and see that as a movement to bring people into that very exciting role and the jobs that you have available in space division and maybe the elimination, potentially, of that universality to open that more to people who don't want to leave CAF and want that exciting reposting?

[BGen Michael Adamson]

I think it probably wouldn't come as a surprise to understand that most space operations are done at a desk, at a console in an operations centre, as opposed to deploying perhaps in harsher environments where universality of service is a factor.

It's probably worth noting as well that close to 50% of the space division at the moment is civilian personnel who obviously aren't subject to universality of service concerns. We are well aware that if there are folks who have restrictions on their universality of service, we are welcoming as long as they can do the job that we need them to do and are able to meet those requirements.

There is an element of being deployable with some of our folks. There is a possibility that we may deploy space support teams into the field to support deployed commanders, but for the most part, our work is done locally within the headquarters environment, and certainly we'd be able to accommodate those universality of service concerns.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Fillmore was asking a lot about the private side, the commercial side, and how we support Canadian industry, and it's good that we move in that way. It's certainly something burgeoning and something that we do need to work more on.

Currently, the Americans have built a network of hundreds of spy satellites, but through Elon Musk's company. I have a lot of questions about that partnership, considering our allyship and our extreme intertwined role with the United States. How reliant are we upon a company like SpaceX, for example, for our capabilities?

[BGen Michael Adamson]

That's a great question.

I guess I would probably not characterize any of the SpaceX capabilities as spy satellites. Really, they are communication satellites that are designed to provide high bandwidth communications to a consumer or customer.

Now, I know that in the interests of understanding how that might work in a military context, there has been use of Starlink capabilities on the U.S. side to better understand whether or not that would serve a need for more communications. I don't think we can ever have too many communications capabilities in a military context.

As for our reliance on it from a Canadian perspective, we're not reliant at all on anything like SpaceX or Starlink for conducting any of our business, which isn't to say that at some point we might not want to use SpaceX or another commercial provider for satellite communications, in addition to military satellite communications, but that would be the same as using the Internet.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you.

Mr. Kelly, you have five minutes.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Thank you.

General Frawley, in response to Mrs. Gallant's question about domain awareness and her question about the possibility of further incursions into Canadian airspace such as what we saw in the early months of 2023, you said that our radar coverage is insufficient to detect these kinds of threats, or at least all of these kinds of threats. Can you elaborate on that?

[LGen Blaise Frawley]

Absolutely, Mr. Chair.

This has been identified over numerous years. Our commander makes a report to both the Secretary of Defense and the Chief of the Defence Staff highlighting that we have issues with domain awareness when it comes to our radar coverage. If you look out beyond our coasts, both east and west and in the north, you see that once you get a distance off the coast, we have no radar coverage.

In northern Canada and central northern Canada especially, where everybody lives in northern Canada and there are very few people, there's very little to no radar coverage, including communication coverage. Again, that has been identified, and that's why we are moving forward with over-the-horizon radar to solve that problem of covering those areas that are currently not covered.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

What's the delivery date for an over-the-horizon system that will correct all of these shortcomings?

[LGen Blaise Frawley]

I can speak to over-the-horizon radar. It's OTHR Arctic, which is one of two Canadian radars that will be fielded by 2026. For the polar variant, which will be situated further north in Canada and will look over the poles, I don't have a date on that, but it's a number of years later. There is still a certain amount of R and D going on to figure out how to bounce off the polar atmosphere. The U.S. is in line with similar timelines, with 2026 for their radars for the coasts.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

In 2022, the Auditor General reported that it will take a decade for the Canadian Space Agency to launch a successor to RADARSAT and that an interruption in satellite earth observation services past 2026 is a significant risk.

When will we have a successor to RADARSAT?

[BGen Michael Adamson]

We have been leveraging RADARSAT-2 for a number of years to provide synthetic aperture radar intelligence gathering—or information gathering, if you will—overlaid with automated identification of shipping, to look at the approaches to North America.

RADARSAT-2 then begat RADARSAT Constellation Mission. We worked very closely with the Canadian Space Agency in order to deliver those effects. I believe it was just last year, if I'm not mistaken, that there was a funding announcement for the CSA in order to extend the lifespan of RCM, the RADARSAT Constellation Mission.

I understand that my CSA colleagues are following us today, so I'll let them talk about how RADARSAT Constellation Mission will be extended going into the future.

Beyond that, we do have a program of record, called “defence enhanced surveillance from space”. That will provide synthetic aperture radar, as we see now with AIS data, and then potentially other on-board sensors as well, to contribute to our understanding of what's going on around the globe. Delivery timelines at the moment, I believe, are probably mid-2030s.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

If I may go back to General Frawley, if RADARSAT fails in 2026, as is the expectation built into the lifespan of that system, how does that affect North American air defence?

[LGen Blaise Frawley]

We use RADARSAT—RADARSAT Constellation Mission—primarily for maritime warning, the third mission that I mentioned. It's not the only source of data. Clearly, there's RCM, and there's other data available, so it's blended in with significant other ISR data from other platforms to give us our maritime warning picture.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

You're going to defer to our next panel on the expectation of replacement on that. You don't know when a RADARSAT replacement will be ready.

[LGen Blaise Frawley]

For the RADARSAT Constellation Mission, I don't have any information on that, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You have 30 seconds.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Is there capacity within the private sector to provide the information that we are waiting for? Is there anything off the shelf that can be quickly procured for the replacement of this system or to replace the capability of the system?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Let it be quickly procured and quickly answered.

[BGen Michael Adamson]

I'll answer very quickly, then, Mr. Chair.

Yes, I fully expect that there would be some kind of civil or commercial capability that would be available for us to leverage.