Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to this bill today and to set it in the context of what has been already an incredibly exciting year for space in Canada, a year in which we have sent and seen return back, from the far side of the moon, Colonel Jeremy Hansen. With Dr. Jenni Gibbons, they were a key part of that work with respect to the Artemis II mission of the Canadian Space Agency.
I appreciate the comments from my colleagues from Souris—Moose Mountain and London—Fanshawe with respect to some of the particularities of the bill and their concerns.
It is rare that we get a piece of legislation that has some inspiring words in its text, but I am going to share some of these and will come back to the manner in which this is inspiring specifically.
There were some questions around what was in the legislation and some vagueness. However, I read some very specific language in the legislation. I want to read out here what it says under proposed subsection 3.2(1):
The following definitions apply in this Act.
launch vehicle means
(a) a rocket; or
(b) a vehicle, other than a rocket, that is designed to ascend to Earth orbit or beyond.
re-entry vehicle means a vehicle that is designed to be returned by its operator, substantially intact, from Earth orbit or beyond to Earth.
In the very text of this legislation, we have the imagination, the promise and the hope of space exploration. The thing that is inspiring millions of Canadians and has inspired hundreds of millions of people around the world with the Artemis II mission is part of the framework of this legislation today. It is talking about vehicles that were not earlier contemplated in our aeronautics legislation. The Canadian space launch act sets up a position where we can imagine vehicles we did not have as deployable resources, imagining a sector that is emerging, but needs some regulatory shape to it, and bringing it into life.
I think that, very crucially, the legislation does a very good job of balancing the need to promote risk-taking and the gathering and deployment of resources across Canada with the appropriate supervision of the minister, the departments and others, but with the right calibration toward risk-taking and setting into motion an industry that already exists. However, from a G7 perspective, the very specific things we want to do in this sector we are not doing as much in Canada as other G7 partners.
The Canadian Space Agency is a key partner in the Artemis II mission. The European Space Agency is very much involved as well.
I forgot to mention that I will be sharing my time with the member for Peace River—Westlock. My enthusiasm for this mission and all things space in this moment is very heightened. I apologize for that brief oversight.
It is not just the inspiration. When one is in space, one cannot do what my friend from British Columbia would like me to do in this moment. When one is on a mission, one has to keep going. Our friend Colonel Hansen definitely did that.
I want to draw attention to the Artemis II mission, and I mentioned Colonel Hansen. Two other astronauts had a key role. One was Jenni Gibbons on Artemis II. She was in mission control. She was officially one of the backups on the mission, so she had to be ready. She went through the exact same training as the other astronauts. She is also the youngest Canadian astronaut and a huge source of pride, motivation and inspiration, not just to women and girls, but to Canadians across the country who can say that they can do this, that they can go into space.
I also want to draw the attention of members to Joshua Kutryk. We are sending a second Canadian astronaut into space at the end of this year, to the International Space Station on another mission. He is going to be in space for around six months. We respect the personal cost, the sacrifice and training he has had to go through, the running of scientific experiments and the extent to which he is subjecting himself to that experimentation. We thank him.
These astronauts, these heroes for Canadians, are heroes they might have seen earlier in movies and are now able to watch on television in these missions. They are a really important part of the space sector and the inspiration that is coming in this year of space for Canada.
It is not just the astronauts. Recently I had the pleasure of meeting some young people who were employed by NordSpace, which is one of the companies looking to do, and that has done, some very successful tests around rocket launches in Canada. I met one of them at a recent Next Generation Manufacturing conference. She came into the sector through the Royal Canadian Air Cadets, specifically 631 Sentinel squadron in Scarborough. She told me that once one has a taste of aerospace, it never goes away.
We are building a sector that is inspiring hundreds of thousands of Canadians. It is a sector they want to join. When there is an appetite or an interest, what does government do to serve that interest? In the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy articulated a national mission, and that attracted resources and energy. Obviously, the U.S. administration and NASA were very involved in leading that effort. It is the connection between government action and inspiration that I want to draw members' attention to.
By saying we are going to have sovereign space launch, I mean we are going to make space for more of the NordSpaces of the world to, again, as described in the legislation, launch rockets and launch vehicles that were not earlier contemplated in legislation. This creates the space for young people, like the woman from 631 Sentinel squadron, to then get into that sector.
I was talking about space, and there is a lot of interest in space this year, and these kinds of sovereign launch capabilities have a relationship to some of our deep space missions, but even the near-Earth orbit that would probably be the more daily subject of this piece of legislation also creates its own inspiration.
A number of years ago, when I was teaching at what was then Ryerson University, now Toronto Metropolitan University, I assigned a biography of Elon Musk to my students as an example of, at the time, some of the ways in which he was pushing the frontiers. There is a very fascinating chapter in the Elon Musk biography by Ashlee Vance on his work with SpaceX and the frontiers he was pushing with the scientists and the engineers in his company, saying, “Can we do this faster? Can we do this better?” He was imagining something that had never been done, except by a giant corporation and a giant space agency, the biggest entities in the world. He decided to move into space because of his inspiration and because of the capital he had to deploy.
We know, and I know from teaching those students, that that effort, that imagination, that ambition inspired them and other Canadians. Now we have other inspirations that are not just from Elon Musk and are not just American. NordSpace itself is an inspiration. The astronauts I mentioned earlier are an inspiration. It is lighting a fire and an interest on campuses across Canada. I was recently at an Artemis II space launch celebration gathering. There were gatherings across Canada for both the launch and the landing. We felt our hearts beat as the capsule came toppling through the atmosphere and then cheered when those first parachutes came up.
It is those moments that are inspiring students across Canada. At the Artemis II space launch event that I attended with Let's Talk Science at the University of Toronto, I met a group of undergraduate students who were starting a rocket club, the second rocket club on campus. There was already a rocket club for the engineers, and this was a group of arts students and science students who were going to have their own rocket club. There are students who are joining competitions and getting course credits. They are building the kind of excitement and economy that would be supported by this act.
Recently, I had the pleasure and the opportunity as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry to visit Western University, the University of Waterloo and the University of Victoria, all campuses and locations that have this research energy but also student energy toward the space launch capabilities that this act would be building.
I think my colleagues are going to share some of the other very specific benefits of this legislation, the economic benefits and the regional benefits. We are not going to have our own Kennedy Space Center or our own Cape Canaveral, but we can have versions of those places that people are proud of, that we can launch from and identify with.
I want to conclude by reminding us of the vision that is required here, with a quote by Langston Hughes, in the Dalton McGuinty book Be a Good One:
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
In this legislation, we are giving Canadians from coast to coast the opportunity to fly. It is a great opportunity and a great piece of legislation. I commend it to the members of the House.
