Industry Committee on May 11th, 2010

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

All right. Did you get a T4 for that?

[Steve MacLean]

Let me take 60 seconds to talk about Guy Laliberté. It was a difficult decision for me. Were we going to support such a mission, considering we were using taxpayers' monies, or should we step back and let him do his own show? I decided we were going to support him but without spending a lot of money. We would support him with our people. We would make sure that he received proper training. That is what we did because our space station is a fantastic asset and, if someone makes a mistake, we might lose all that we have accomplished. So, we provided training to Guy, at a higher level than to other tourists.

We called him a “private space explorer”, not a tourist, to try to encourage him to understand the role he was playing.

Guy has a past. I don't know if it's true or not, but he definitely has a reputation. However, I will tell you that from the moment I met him, he had a capacity for memory, he could focus on what was important, and he got along incredibly well with the entire crew.

He had a mission with respect to one job. I think you have to say he was successful at that. The media calculated that he received $865 million worth of advertising for his One Drop campaign; that will make a difference over time, so I tip my hat to what he did.

The other space tourists did not accomplish as much as he was able to accomplish. It was a joy to participate with him on that mission. Over the six months I met him and worked with him and knew him. It was an amazing partnership for the Canadian Space Agency and, basically, Cirque du Soleil.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Dr. MacLean.

Go ahead, Mr. Van Kesteren.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all for coming. This is incredible.

I think a lot of the questions have been exhausted as far as the direction I want to go, but the one thing that really stands out is the camaraderie that you've accomplished. I think we all agree on the importance of nations' working together. What an incredible opportunity this is to advance our causes.

There's an ancient proverb that says “people perish for lack of vision”. I think sometimes we can be moved away from that if we all have a common vision, and space definitely is one of these visions.

You've touched on a number of possibilities: we may go to Mars, we may go to an asteroid, or we may go beyond that. Has there been any movement towards a collective vision within the European Union, the United States, Japan, and Canada? Have we included other countries? You talked a little bit about China. China seems to have its own goals, but has there been an attempt to bring China into that sphere, and India or Brazil as well?

Those are the obvious ones, but I think about nations such as Turkey or, I suppose, any nation in the entire world, and I want to say, “Listen, we want you to become part of this. Here's how you can contribute. Here are possibly some of the benefits for you”.

In Canada we've had a number of astronauts go up. There's an opportunity for other countries. Is there such a movement? If so, how far along are you, and what are your plans?

[Dr. Steve MacLean]

I think I'll let Koichi start and I'll comment.

[Dr. Koichi Wakata]

Actually, this discussion has been going on. For example, Japan is at this time the only country participating in the international space station from Asia. Each year we have the Asia-Pacific Regional Space Agency Forum. We have Canadian representatives, U.S. representatives, representatives from Russia, Kazakhstan, China, and so on. Many countries are participating. We talk about the utilization of the space station.

Among those five core partners of the international space station, this is not officially discussed, but on a bilateral level we have been discussing utilization with other countries. Japan is trying to open up these opportunities to utilize the Japanese Kibo module.

As Steve said, we expanded it. More than 80 countries are utilizing the data that we gained from the international space station. I think this is the direction we are headed, and we are already proceeding in this.

[Frank De Winne]

I want to reiterate that the European Union now has competence in space. As a result of that, we had a first meeting in Prague last year, trying to debate what Europe should do in space exploration. It was decided that there would be a follow-up conference this year on October 21 in Brussels. The political level has given us a number of tasks concerning what we should debate at that conference.

One of the questions the European Space Agency asked us to explore with the European member states is the possibility of establishing a worldwide forum at the political level to debate the questions of space exploration. Again, this was a question asked; there is no decision yet, but I think that in Europe, at least, there is a will to establish such a forum so that every nation around the world can have its voice in this big program.

Of course, it will take a long time. Cooperation is not easy. Let's face it: if you are the sole decision-maker and you can decide everything on your own and you have the funds to do so, it's a lot easier than to have to sit around the table with 25 nations that all want to have their voices and their shares, but I think the benefits, in the long term, are really incredible, so I hope we will debate this question on October 21 this year in Brussels. I hope we will have a positive answer and can establish such a worldwide forum at the political level to discuss space exploration on a global level.

[Dr. Steve MacLean]

It was the same with the White House commission. The first series of testimonies were related to the technology and the vision and the direction that we should perhaps take. Three months later I was called back to testify again, and the entire day was spent on how to involve China. Given that China is a spacefaring nation on its own—they have 40,000 people in their mission control, which is more than any other nation—how do we work together, and what role does Canada want to play if we go in that direction? So there certainly is a lot of discussion and a lot of will at the highest level to do this kind of thing.

On the other hand, things are changing in space. We've been talking about exploration of asteroids and Mars, but also, just ten years ago, the resolution from satellites was about 30 metres. Today our RADARSAT-2 has a resolution of one metre. Optical satellites have a resolution of half a metre. Right now there are 70 Earth observation satellites orbiting the Earth. In ten years there will be about 300. It will really change how we do business, and I think Canada needs to stay at the forefront of this.

Take agriculture, for example. By using data from four different satellites—and we've done this with projects in P.E.I. and Saskatchewan—we can improve crop yields by 35% to 80%. Given that 13% of the GDP of this country is agriculture, that's $2 billion per year, even if you did it only at 10%. The challenge is to convince all farmers to use these assets, but the assets are there. There's a crossroads on what space can do for Earth and there's a crossroads on where we can go with respect to applications.

At the last space meeting, which was held in Korea—the next one is in Czechoslovakia—there were 72 countries involved. Just a few years ago, there were half that number. The number of emerging space nations is huge. Brazil is starting, and India is doubling its budget over the next two or three years, and t's because of this improvement in the quality of the data that we can provide for the benefit of Earth.

It's very important for us to take advantage of this emergence of the use of space. If there's one phrase I would like you to remember from a meeting such as this, it's that space should be an essential element of government infrastructure. If we do that, it will take us into the future. I talked to Gerry Ritz about all of this, and he became quite excited. When we departed, he shook my hand and said, “You know, Steve, this will take Canada's farming into the future. We need to do this kind of thing.”

However, there is a bureaucratic environment in Ottawa. There is a tremendous amount of support to do it, but to get it done in a timely fashion so that we can compete against the other nations is our challenge.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

You have segued into my next question. I was talking to one of my colleagues who did an agricultural visit and a study. They went to Saskatchewan and they were telling me precisely of a farmer who used that technology. The results are astounding. The implications, as you said, are just phenomenal.

You've already raised this, but I want you to add to it. I remember that when the space program first was launched in the U.S., we all had these little Texas Instruments calculators and we marveled at them. That was a direct result of the space flights to the moon.

You've talked about agriculture and you've talked about a number of other things. Are there other space program benefits that have really profound impact on this planet that you haven't mentioned but would like to talk about?

[Dr. Steve MacLean]

What I said earlier was that in the face of government priorities, space should be an essential element of government infrastructure. This is the one sentence that is very important to get everybody to remember.

If I take each government department, say Agriculture and Agri-Food, I can find a resonating example. I had dinner with Claire Dansereau yesterday, the deputy minister of Fisheries and Oceans, and I can find one resonating example for her. As for Environment Canada, it's clear what I feel the resonating example is with Environment Canada.

I'll be frank. There are a lot of talking heads on TV talking about climate change. I have been involved in climate change since the 1980s. I used to fly over the pole making measurements of ozone. I think it's very important for space to bring the data to the leadership of the country so that the leadership has the right data on which to make policy decisions about climate change. We are positioned to do that. It does require investment, though.

I told myself I wouldn't do this, but I'm going to do it. Our budget is 40% of what it was in 1996, yet we're still effective. I'm not going to do this again, but it takes investment to do this. We are effective in the sense that with our partners here, we have the best optical equipment to measure climate change in the world.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Are we not using that equipment at this point?

[Dr. Steve MacLean]

We have a satellite up there right now that has the best optical instrument in the world. It is making those measurements, but we need to make it operational and put more of them up there.

I can talk about just this for an hour.

[Dr. Robert Thirsk]

Can I talk about medicine and telehealth? I have a medical background, so I'm rather biased.

I talked about the neuroArm a few minutes ago. One of the things that the ground team needs to do is provide health care for astronauts in orbit. We're isolated in orbit. If we have a medical problem, you have to think very carefully about whether you're going to return that individual to the ground or allow the person to continue in orbit. We like to continue the mission if at all possible. Therefore we have some in situ medical capability on board the station and we have some training ourselves. We are able to deal with the usual types of problems and also with serious problems, such as cardiac dysrhythmias.

A lot of the techniques we have developed have spun off to Earth-based applications. A lot of the telemetry equipment in ICUs, the intensive care units, came from our space program, from wireless technology and from miniaturization technology as well.

One of the problems that Canada has is trying to attract young graduate doctors to remote communities or to northern Canada. One of the reasons is that they don't feel technologically supported up there. A lot of the technologies that we have developed—the ultrasound technology, the telehealth technology, consultations with specialists at tertiary care centres—we're developing in concert with the people on Earth. Canada is a country that really needs telehealth, and we're working well that way. In our program, there's spin-off and spin-in. Some day we're going to go to Mars and we're going to be performing surgery on astronauts on Mars. The kind of laparoscopic, keyhole surgery that we will develop for those procedures can be performed in northern Canada and hopefully will attract young doctors who graduate in Canada away from the big cities and up into the small centres in Canada's north.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Dr. Thirsk.

Dr. MacLean, before we go to Mr. Masse, you touched on the science of climate change. I assume this is an area in which you are knowledgeable. There's been a lot of recent debate in Canada about the veracity of the science behind climate change. I was wondering what your views are on the science of climate change.

[Dr. Steve MacLean]

This is a very difficult question to answer in a sound bite. It really requires a long discussion.

I was up north just this summer, in the far north. We're planning to put up a ground station quite far up north, and I was up there for the first time. I think the conditions speak for themselves.

Whether we call it climate change or not, I'm not going to go there, but there are changes taking place. The north is melting. Areas that were frozen in by August, that being the end of summer, are no longer frozen in. The Louis S. St-Laurent is up there, and it often doesn't meet any ice. There's a Students on Ice program that we took pictures of when we were in orbit--we took pictures of their ship--and there was no ice around them.

I flew in 1992. On my first mission, I was on an equatorial flight, so I could see all the glaciers between +28 and -28 degrees. My second mission took me up to space station latitudes, which are much higher. There was clearly less ice--by memory, not by measurement--on all the mountains, and I flew in the same month in those two years, but 14 years apart. There are changes taking place.

I disagree, though, that it's a disaster. I disagree with people who get on TV and say that it's a disaster. To me, it's an opportunity. If the entire Greenland ice sheet melts and flows into the ocean, will the ocean level rise? Yes, it will rise, and it will rise by the numbers the scientists say, but our models are not very good.

One of the reasons we're pushing a PolarSat mission for the next budget, which you guys will see as we move through the budget cycle, is that it can measure climate characteristics in the far north from a distance.

Now, Europe has many satellites that fly at low altitude and measure climate change, but they just get pieces of it. We're taking one out to a geosynchronous orbit, and we're going to try to get the whole story. By improving the data over the north, we improve the data that come in over the south, and we improve the models. We therefore improve our predicting capability on climate change. It's there that I think the different countries of the world should invest. Canada should be part of that. In fact, the UN has done a gap analysis, and the second most important satellite the UN would like the world to fly is one Canada could contribute to.

There has been no commitment on this. It's a discussion. The idea is to get this data, get climate change measured, get it into the models, and then give the answers to the leadership of the nation so that they can make the right policy decisions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

We'll go to Mr. Masse.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for being here to brief the committee on the very important work that is happening here.

I'm a little bit shocked, though. I don't know how the elimination of species could be described as anything but a disaster. That's something that I find actually rather shocking, because that is the end result that is taking place, whether we call it climate change or something else. We are witnessing a global shift; plants, animals, and the human race are going to be in a different shift than they were before. I'll leave it at that for now.

I want to follow up on your earlier commentary, though. With regard to the main estimates, the Space Agency requested $390 million from this government and received $110 million. What's the difference in the work that is being done because of the gap between those numbers? What is not getting done because of the fact that you're about $300 million short?

[Dr. Steve MacLean]

When I came on board, I was mandated to come up with a plan with respect to where this country should go with respect to space.

We are in a tough fiscal environment right now. In Budget 2009 we received $110 million. The purpose of that money is to bridge the gap between the exploration we have done since 1986, when our robotics developments were mandated by the Government of Canada, and when we calculated the next major decision would be made about exploration. so that $110 million was for robotics.

The next large element in the plan is the RADARSAT constellation mission, which is a series of three missions that will make measurements that will contribute to our sovereignty, safety, and security and contribute to fisheries and oceans, part of the agriculture and agrifood issue. That's one satellite of the four we need to do that.

For that system, $397 million was funded in Budget 2010, and we were asked to get $100 million more out of our own existing resources to support that particular system. That was the five-year cost of the program. The actual cost of that satellite system will be about $897 million.

The next major project that I think we should invest in is a PolarSat constellation. This is a series of two satellites that will bring broadband to every Canadian in the north. We don't have that right now. Anik F2 works well to 60 degrees latitude and works intermittently up to about 70, so we need to change that. Our idea there is if that you build the proper infrastructure, the development of our north will take place faster.

The second purpose of that satellite system is weather. There is no weather satellite over the north right now. You get weather swaths. Europe has weather satellites that fly at low altitude, but they only give you pieces of the data. There is no NOAA-type satellite that sits way over the equator and takes it. We have weather information up to about 55 degrees. We don't have it in the north, so this weather satellite will contribute to the World Meteorological Organization and improve all the models I was telling you about.

Then we have climate change. Climate change is important to the Canadian Space Agency. I just referred to the accuracy of the talking heads; there is a difference. It is an important file. It is a priority for the country, but we have to do it accurately. We can't be held hostage by somebody who is threatening us with stuff that's not true. That's all I'm saying; I'm not saying it's not an issue. The third portion of the PolarSat is that particular capability to give us better measurements about what is really happening with climate change.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

You mentioned that the Obama administration is advancing around $6 billion toward that. Ironically, that is the implementation number for the HST. It is choices.

I would like to know why, in your perspective, no one has gone back to the moon. It's been trumped as a significant achievement for mankind, of course, but Obama is looking more to Mars, and so forth. Why has no one else gone back to the moon? Is there no significant value, aside from just the optics of it, or is there more of a desire to get to Mars, thinking there could be some benefits there?

I think what you did was important. You really touched on some very practical elements when we were talking about the different gaps here. People don't realize that. If you're walking around the grocery store and talking to people, why should we go into space? You've got some very practical things that make a lot of sense, things that people tie to their daily lives.

Why Mars versus the moon?

[Dr. Steve MacLean]

This is a difficult question to answer. Let me show you where the data are on the moon right now.

From the Canadian perspective, the answer is simple. We don't have such a large lunar community; we do have a large academic Martian community. From a Canadian perspective, my decision-making is easy in this area. If you were to ask me what we recommend, then I can easily let the moon go to the side because of that.

From a world perspective, it's a little different. In the Aitken Basin on the south pole of the moon, they feel there is a lake there now. It's frozen. It's subterranean a little bit. It's 965 kilometres across. They are also learning interesting things about the regolith on the moon, so there are technical and scientific reasons for going. If we go to the moon, it will allow us to test all our equipment, because it's only three days away. If we go to the moon first, we really improve the survival chances of the first crew going to Mars. There's a discussion and debate around that.

Now, let's go and look at Mars. What do we have on Mars? Mars has an atmosphere. Mars has a climate system. Mars used to have oceans on it. Those oceans have evaporated. It is possible--and it's a discussion and a debate, so I'm not giving you an answer--that if we go to Mars first, we will learn more about our own Earth.

I mentioned to you the optical instrument that we're flying in orbit now and that the UN would like us to fly more. We can fly that around Mars. We will learn the characteristics around the planet Mars and understand what's going on and use those data to improve what might happen to the Earth.

Mars has a magnetic field. The moon does not have a magnetic field of any significance. Therefore, studying what's called the electron outflow off the atmosphere of Mars is something that's very important to do because it's different than what it is.... There's a dynamic interchange across the atmosphere in space that we measure. It's different over the atmosphere of Mars compared to what it is on Earth. It's important for us to make these kinds of measurements so that we can understand our own planet better.

From a Canadian point of view, if I were able to convince the leadership to spend x millions of dollars, going to an asteroid is something that we could do, because the delta-v--that's the delta velocity--to get to an asteroid is small. For us to develop something that remotely lands on the surface of Mars is too expensive for the amount of money that the Canadian government would be willing to put up.

There are a whole series of different rationales about why you would do one relative to the other. Sometimes the moon would win. Internationally, sometimes the moon appears to be smarter and sometimes Mars appears to be smarter. From a Canadian perspective, Mars and the asteroids would be a smarter decision in order to drive innovation in this country as well.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Very good.

I have one last quick question. There's something I think my constituents, and maybe others, would want to know, and you're under oath here: is space food actually good?

[Some voices]

Oh, Oh!

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

We see it packaged and marketed, but I want to know if it's actually good. I'm not buying it, but people would like to know.

[Dr. Steve MacLean]

Bob, I'll let you go, but I'll start.

The stomach shuts down when you first get to orbit. All your systems shut down a little bit, so the HCl that's secreting out of the inner lining of your stomach to digest your food doesn't quite work the way it did before you left. Because of that, the best thing to take when you first get up there--not everybody agrees with this, and it's somewhat anecdotal--is shrimp cocktail with as much horseradish as you can take. If you take that, it kickstarts your stomach into action.

I will tell you that the shrimp cocktail tastes very good when you first get on orbit, but the consistency of the shrimp is like cardboard, so there's a balance.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

You'd do well at the receptions in Ottawa.