Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for the invitation to participate today.
Telesat is one of the world’s largest and most innovative satellite operators, operating for over 50 years from our headquarters here in Ottawa. As a proud Canadian company, we play a central role in Canada’s connectivity infrastructure.
This hearing comes at a critical time for the aerospace sector, including the commercial space industry. Like many sectors around the world, ours is facing significant disruption and change. While the COVID-19 pandemic has hurt our business, the larger disruption we’re facing stems from changes in technology and the hyper competitive global market that we compete in.
Telesat identified these changes early and we're used to competing. As a result, we began innovating and investing heavily to reorient the company to become a world leader in delivering broadband Internet connectivity, demand for which is exploding globally.
In this regard, last month we officially unveiled the most ambitious and innovative project in our long history: an investment of six and a half billion dollars in a state-of-the-art low-earth orbit, or LEO, satellite constellation known as Telesat Lightspeed.
Lightspeed will deliver significant economic and social benefits to Canada, including supporting fast, affordable, reliable and secure broadband connectivity and 5G services throughout the entire country, the criticality of which the pandemic has strongly underscored. Lightspeed also delivers huge capital investment and high-quality, high-paid jobs in the Canadian aerospace sector, which comes at a time when investment and preserving and creating jobs have never been more important.
Three weeks ago, we announced with Premier Legault a $1.6-billion investment by Telesat into the Quebec aerospace ecosystem, creating over 600 new high-skilled, high-paying jobs across the province while maintaining another 650 jobs at MDA’s Montreal facility. As part of this investment, a significant percentage of the Lightspeed constellation will be manufactured in Quebec. We're also establishing extensive technical operations in the province.
Lightspeed is the largest space program ever conceived in Canada. It’s exactly what Canada and the Canadian aerospace sector need. The new space economy is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world, with the global space industry estimated to nearly triple to over a trillion dollars U.S. a year over the next two decades. Next generation satellite connectivity, like Lightspeed, is responsible for the majority of this growth.
We’re not the only ones who see this massive opportunity. Telesat competes in one of the most competitive and dynamic industries in the world. Our competitors are among some of the largest, most innovative companies on the planet, and they’re working hand in glove with their governments in this fast-growing, highly strategic market. These governments—the U.S., the EU, China, Russia and India—recognize the significant benefits of the new space economy, from job creation to intellectual property creation, and are investing billions of dollars each year to help their domestic companies compete. The Government of Quebec also recognizes the strong growth potential in space, and we’re pleased that they’re investing $400 million in our Lightspeed constellation and supporting other space initiatives with roots in the province as well.
I’m pleased also with the endorsement we’ve received from the federal government, particularly our partnership to use Lightspeed to help bridge the digital divide in Canada, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t raise again with this committee the importance of something that we discussed when I appeared before you last November to discuss rural broadband connectivity, namely, the pending proceeding at ISED to repurpose for 5G use certain spectrum that Telesat presently uses across Canada to provide a whole range of vital services.
As we discussed when I spoke with you last November, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission paid our much larger competitors approximately $16 billion to clear this same spectrum in the United States for 5G—spectrum they just auctioned to AT&T and others in the highest-grossing spectrum auction in history. Our competitors are using these funds to invest against us.
We made a proposal to ISED to clear this same spectrum and reinvest all the proceeds into our Lightspeed constellation and to safely transition all those important existing services.
Listen. We're in a very competitive environment. We're innovating. We're investing. If we're successful, we are going to be the largest satellite operator in the world, and we're just looking for the government to make the right decisions.
Thank you, Madam Chair.