Evidence of meeting #4 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was satellites.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:55 p.m.
Vice-President, Satellite Government Affairs, Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
We don't operate in the mid-band spectrum, so we're not part of the coming auction or the auction in the U.S. I will say that I think there's a very important place for terrestrial operators, and that infrastructure and service delivery I think is going to continue regardless of what happens with LEO constellations. Our licences are not regional for satellite services.
12:55 p.m.
Bloc
Sébastien Lemire Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
Mr. Goldberg, what is the useful life of LEO satellites?
Is their useful life conducive to the need for speed capacity?
When will you have to replace the satellites in the constellation?
12:55 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Telesat
We've designed these very advanced satellites. We expect they'll be lasting at least 10 years. The longer they're there, the more opportunity we have to achieve a return on the satellites. It's important that the business cases underpinning these LEO constellations are sound.
Ms. Cooper referred to her founder making the observation that the goal here is not to go bankrupt, and we've seen LEO companies do that before. We've designed these satellites to last long enough that we can achieve the kind of returns we need, but we'll not only be replacing them at the end of the 10 years, we'll be launching more, to scale up the service and to have better service for Canadians throughout.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sherry Romanado
Thank you very much.
Our last round of questions will go to MP Masse.
You have the floor for two and a half minutes.
12:55 p.m.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, witnesses. There has been really good testimony today.
Mr. Goldberg, just to get an idea here, though, because at the end of the day, what we're trying to do is.... For years, I've been saying that service is essential. When you look at phones and at how government departments and a number of other things have moved online, we've got away from bricks and mortar, so there's a greater onus to do this. Actually, that can also push the costs onto customers and individual wallets.
With your plan right now, what happens after, say, for example, one or two years, if it's not viable to proceed with the full rollout of $600 million? I think you did a really good job of explaining how it works. The upside, hopefully, is that it might become even more successful—and we all hope that—but what happens if it doesn't prove viable in the short term in the next couple of years?
12:55 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Telesat
I'd say that we're about to become very, very pregnant on our LEO constellation. We're going to announce the contracts to build it and launch it. It's going to cover the full 300 satellites. Yes, we're in with both feet here.
Listen. In our own business plan, we expect that pricing is going to continue to come down and we've built our business plan to be sort of bulletproof, to operate in an environment with declining prices. That's been our experience over the last 50 years. Prices are coming down. We know that's what our customers want and what the regulators want, and we've built the business case to support that.
1 p.m.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
That's good to hear, because even before COVID, obviously, we New Democrats have been calling this an essential service, just like our phone service, where we're connected in the home. We're moving to telehealth and we're moving to all of those different things. Now with COVID, education is more prominent and so forth. The pricing right now is not acceptable. We have to get it down.
That's why I want to change the way we do our spectrum auction. I don't want it to actually be a revenue generator. I want it to be more like an RFP to actually push it out to connect Canadians with lower pricing.
I'll leave it at that, Madam Chair.
Thank you. You answered that question. That was my concern. We have to get it lower. The status quo is just not going to work for us, and it's going keep us uncompetitive in the world.
Thank you very much for your time.
1 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sherry Romanado
That is our time for today.
Thank you, witnesses, for being here today and for your excellent testimony. I thank the members, analysts, translators, the clerk and our team in West Block for their help.
With that, the meeting is adjourned.