Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and distinguished members of this Standing Committee on National Defence. It is my honour and pleasure to testify before you today in support of your work on the state of Canadian defence space capabilities.
Today, I am here as the founder and CEO of NorthStar Earth and Space. I was born and raised in Montreal. I am an aerospace engineer and began my career in the space sector here in Ottawa, in the late 1980s. At that time, I was working on the RADARSAT mission for CAL Corporation, which became MDA Space, in Montreal, and Honeywell, in Ottawa. Since then, my work has taken me all over the world many times to pursue innovative business opportunities and to develop new and innovative products and technologies.
Headquartered in Montreal, NorthStar is a Canadian company that has leveraged more than $140 million, primarily from Telesystem Space, an alliance between Telesystem in Montreal and Rogers in Toronto. NorthStar has strong business interests in the United States, Europe and Japan, and soon in New Zealand as well, but it will continue to represent Canadian values.
The global space economy was estimated to be $550 billion in 2023. According to the U.S. Space Foundation, this economy will be worth nearly $2 trillion U.S. by 2035, of which 80% qualifies as commercial activity. With this, I encourage the Canadian government to embrace the challenge mentioned earlier by witness Mr. Gallant and presented in a report by Deloitte of maintaining its 2% economic role in the global economy within the rapidly growing space economy to achieve $40 billion by 2040, or 40 by 40.
This is achievable and critically necessary to provide Canadians the security and economic benefits expected from, and Canada's role in, the global space economy. Broad and positive trends created in and from space are increasingly at risk, from both natural and man-made space debris and increasingly nefarious actions in space.
NorthStar's mission derives from the following question: How can the 300 billion cubic metres of space close to Earth be effectively monitored, accurately and in a timely manner?
To achieve that, NorthStar's multidisciplinary team creates products that go far beyond data collection. NorthStar builds on global advancements in data fusion, artificial intelligence and advanced modelling and simulation technologies to transform the data collected into information that is usable in real time.
Currently, space surveillance is accomplished mainly through government and commercial ground-based systems, which are inherently limited by atmospherics and geography. On January 31 of this year, NorthStar launched the first-ever constellation of space situational awareness satellites to actively survey all near-earth orbits from space. With a plan to achieve 12 satellites as soon as the end of 2025, NorthStar is years ahead of any competing system in the world. In this context, NorthStar serves as an active sentinel and early warning system capability for military and civil safety, giving all operators more timely, reliable and accurate information to assess risks and protect or manoeuvre valuable assets in a safe manner.
Recently, NorthStar was one of only two companies, from a pool of almost 60 American, to receive a contract from the U.S. national Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, for their first-ever Space-Watch program. NorthStar is active in the U.S., Europe and Japan on many other commercial initiatives.
Commercial enterprise needs a strong signal from its domestic government about the utility of its capability. NorthStar's recent successes create a great opportunity for the Canadian government to leverage private capital and invoke the unique aspects of commercial business that the government must track to gain maximum leverage of innovative commercial space capabilities.
In closing, thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony today. NorthStar welcomes any and all efforts to enhance Canada's space future. That includes Canada's defence interests, both at home and in partnerships abroad.
I look forward to your questions.
Thank you for your attention.