Thank you, Chairperson.
Thank you to the committee for inviting me to participate in this important study on the aerospace sector. It truly is a privilege to share my perspectives as an aerospace manufacturer and as a proud Canadian.
By way of background, I am the co-founder and CEO of AirShare, Inc., a Canadian company headquartered here in Ottawa that makes safe and cost-effective systems to help manage airspace and small aerial drones as they become increasingly part of our daily lives. Our systems are used in aerospace, commercial and defence applications.
Our company has developed an airborne rocket-powered robot that is used to safely intercept drones that may have gone off course, or which may have nefarious intent.
Our Prime Minister helped coin our tagline in a meeting we had in 2019, as we described our interceptor as the world's friendliest guided missile, something that could only have originated in Canada. So I feel the study and this undertaking that this committee is engaging in is vitally important to Canada and near and dear to my heart.
The input to the study I share today comes from the perspective of a small innovative manufacturer of equipment in the aerospace sector.
It will come as no surprise that the aerospace sector has been hit particularly hard by the pandemic, from reductions in air travel to disruptions in global supply chains. For our segment of the industry, drones and drone safety, there are no concerts, no large public gatherings, tournaments or events that would typically use drones and require drone safety systems as a routine business.
Suppliers of specialized components used in these systems have reduced their production, increased their cost, or have ceased operations altogether. The impact has been broad-reaching throughout the sector.
As a small company, we have had to react quickly, first by working with our key suppliers to develop alternative approaches to maintain product continuity. We then focused on the segments of the customer base that were still in business, and finally we developed new technology and capabilities for a post-pandemic reality.
We were grateful for the support we have received from the Canadian government thus far, utilizing the work-sharing program, for instance for our production staff, while our company funded the supplier, customer and technology changes that were necessary to our ongoing survival.
In terms of recovery, the pandemic has created a great upheaval on a scale we have never seen. While it's hard to see a silver lining, this does present an opportunity for Canada's aerospace sector, and in particular for autonomous aerial vehicles and government to work together on recovering and reinventing.
There are many measures that this committee may wish to consider, however, I'll just mention two in my opening remarks.
The first one is innovation. In a changing world, supporting innovation is even more critical. I have been honoured to see Canada's innovation system grow and adapt over the past 25 years.
We are now seeing a spectrum of support for innovation, starting from the lab and all the way up to market entry. There is lots to build on, and now more than ever, a lot more to do.
Countries like the U.S. have created a system that uses government needs as the market pull. We are now seeing that emerging in Canada with programs like Innovative Solutions Canada and IDEaS.
The U.S. innovation system, and in particular the small business innovation research program, SBIR, focuses heavily on government as the end-user and even funds early-stage projects intended to secure our government user as a first customer, creating memoranda of understanding, matching funding with the private sector investors, leveraging departmental funding and importantly, creating a pathway to large-scale procurement, up to $250 million using other transaction authorities. This program provides continuity with multi-year, multi-stage involvement as the technology, company and customers progress. It would seem that some of these techniques could be applied to Canada's aerospace sector.
The second point is regulation. Government can play a big role by creating sandboxes for the aerospace development and testing that do not require complex regulatory approvals that are typically associated with commercial products' introduction. It goes hand in hand with the innovation emphasis I mentioned previously.
For Canada's aerospace sector to recover, it must reinvent.
From the perspective of our autonomous aerial vehicles manufacturing, this means testing new approaches safely and efficiently, and revisiting regulations in this regard would be most beneficial. We struggled with this aspect, having to fly across the country to get a few days of testing at an approved test site. We eventually purchased our own private test range, which is not sustainable for this sector, and which could have been solved with some regulatory innovation.
I could touch on many more topics, however I'll stop here with my gratitude to the committee for allowing me the time to share my passion for this sector.
Thank you.