Evidence of meeting #102 for National Defence in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was satellites.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Will it be commercially available when it is launched?
Conservative
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Who would be able to use it outside of the Government of Canada, if it's an ISR platform?
Chief Executive Officer, MDA Space
We will have customers on our current RADARSAT-2, which we own and operate. We would have customers in 25 countries around the world. Defence and intelligence agencies around the world would contract us to provide them with surveillance.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Would that include near-peer and adversarial nations?
Chief Executive Officer, MDA Space
It includes countries for which we have export permits from the Government of Canada to deliver a service.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Okay, so that would be screened, and there's a safety check there that would come from Foreign Affairs.
Chief Executive Officer, MDA Space
Absolutely, all the time, and it changes based on the geopolitical situation.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Both you and Telesat have talked about security clearances. Is the government chronically overclassifying information to make it difficult for Canadians and for a Canadian industry to understand the needs and threats that we're facing?
Chief Executive Officer, MDA Space
No, I don't think so. The level of classification and information is appropriate. It just makes sure that the people who need access to that are cleared and approved.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
That also provides more of a bureaucratic slowdown and red tape to get people cleared in a timely manner. We hear over and over again that not just industry representatives but also people who work for the Government of Canada, including the Canadian Armed Forces, can't get their security clearances.
Conservative
Senior Vice President of Sales, Canada, Telesat
In some instances, there could be more open dialogue with the parties that are supplying the services. If it's just shared on a need-to-know basis, it would facilitate an exchange.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
The problem with that is that, whenever the government has a need-to-know basis, they always determine that you don't need to know. That's the easy way out.
My question, then, comes down to this. You both have National Defence contracts already. Why were those security clearances that you had for those projects not continued forward on future contracts?
Senior Vice President of Sales, Canada, Telesat
We were asked to get security clearances two years ago. They were fast-tracked for Telesat. It was never indicated why we needed these top security clearances. We were told that we would be consulted shortly. That consultation never came. We're still waiting on the sharing of information.
We believe that it was associated with the creation of the commercial integration cell activity work that is about to launch, frankly. We do have clearances, and we're waiting to have these very open dialogues and exchanges of information pertaining to the security of satellite communications aspects at least.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Thank you, Mr. Bezan.
For the final three minutes, we'll go to Mr. Fillmore.
Liberal
Andy Fillmore Liberal Halifax, NS
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you very much to the witnesses.
Time has become short, so we're going to go a little quickly here.
Mr. Greenley, it's nice to see you again.
In your limited time in your opening statement, you didn't have much time for detail to go into what you said about this notion of global fairness and Canada's seeming to be negotiating with itself. Could you take a little bit of time to expand on that?
Chief Executive Officer, MDA Space
It's a regular pattern internationally whereby countries, especially on defence and security issues, will leverage their domestic industrial base from a sovereignty and security perspective. As a result of this, they don't worry themselves with making sure that they have international competition and that other countries' firms can come in and compete. It is very natural to be able to say that you want to work with Canadian-domiciled companies, for example, to be able to deal with defence and security issues as a matter of first priority.
For example, if Canada were going to get communications, they wouldn't use Starlink or maybe OneWeb, which would be American-based or European-based. They would work with Telesat once it's operational, because it's Canadian-based, as an example, for a military purpose. It's very natural for countries to do that.
Often, Canada has a view, it would appear, on defence procurement that it's important to have global open and fair competition, which allows equal fairness to Canadian firms and international firms on defence and security issues. Canada tends to be a bit unique in that regard. Other countries don't worry about that. That's what I meant by Canada's negotiating with itself.
Liberal
Andy Fillmore Liberal Halifax, NS
Thank you very much.
Mr. Gallant, it's nice to see you again.
I wonder if you could talk about how industry in Canada is doing relative to industry in our allied and partner countries. Also, can you think about framing your answer in terms of recommendations? What can government be doing to ensure that Canada is keeping up and not lagging?
Chief Executive Officer, Space Canada
I won't repeat everything that we discussed today, because I think a lot of the conversation regarding developing the industrial base will be a big part of it.
For us, what would be really nice to see is Canada even just having the same share of the global space sector that it enjoys in the overall global economy. Right now, we're punching below our weight. When it comes to the global economy, we have a higher percentage than we have for the global space sector.
An interesting recent report published by Deloitte makes the case that if we look at the exponential growth that's predicted for the space sector from now until 2040, if we can grab the share of the global space sector economy by 2040 that we enjoy right now of the overall economy, we will have a $40-billion space sector in Canada, which would be amazing.
That's just punching at our exact weight. It's not too much of a stretch.
Liberal
Andy Fillmore Liberal Halifax, NS
Thank you.
Ms. Beck, you mentioned the commercial integration cell. Brigadier-General Adamson, the commander of 3 Canadian Space Division, mentioned that last week as well.
What would you have the committee know and understand about the commercial integration cell so that we can help support the industry in Canada?