Evidence of meeting #103 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 capabilities.
A recording is available from Parliament.
6:20 p.m.
Liberal
6:20 p.m.
NDP
Lindsay Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
That was quite an end point.
In terms of the commercialization of space, Dr. Hughes, I certainly have my concerns about the movement that we've seen away from government-funded space exploration like the International Space Station and the accords it has provided and the move toward the commercialization of space.
In the last meeting we had on this, there was a belief that in the building of peace and diplomacy, commercial interests could do that just as easily, if not better, than governments had in the past. From that commercial side, through regulation, government would still have a say in how they moved forward. Can I get your thoughts on that?
6:20 p.m.
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Frank McKenna School of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Mount Allison University, As an Individual
Certainly.
In terms of regulations, commercial entities obviously have a significant interest in maintaining space as a peaceful domain. It's entirely antithetical to what most companies would be looking to achieve if regulation were sufficiently loose to facilitate aggression within the space domain.
I would suggest that ultimately regulation will come from states. If it is going to be effective, as Dr. Leuprecht mentioned, it will have to come through a state-based framework. The commercialization of space will fall under the jurisdiction of state government. If a state government has understood itself to be under threat from a commercial satellite, then I would suggest that this will not prevent it from disrupting that satellite and disrupting space operations.
While private industry should be heavily involved in what is happening in the space domain, and while having a partnership with commercial organizations to understand what is happening in the space domain is important, ultimately, regulation will have to come, in my opinion, from individual states.
6:20 p.m.
NDP
Lindsay Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
This certainly isn't new, and governments haven't done, as of yet, any monitoring of that power dynamic and monopoly situation, as we see with SpaceX. Is that correct? The American government is now exclusively working to build hundreds of spy satellites with SpaceX, and we saw what happened in Ukraine.
Is the fact that government hasn't moved in that direction concerning? Can we be concerned that governments will? What are we seeing in that respect?
6:20 p.m.
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Frank McKenna School of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Mount Allison University, As an Individual
I share your concern. Again, the frameworks within which those commercial organizations are operating will differ from those of individual states. State governments, particularly Canada and its partners and allies, will require very robust agreements with those commercial entities. I am not fundamentally convinced that this will ever be entirely sufficient. Ultimately, the state will have to rely on an entity that has potentially different interests. That's unless we end up constricting ourselves to only working with companies from our own states, and I don't think that would be particularly helpful.
That commercialization component does concern me. Fundamentally, Canada, with its allies and partners, really needs to articulate its point of need in the space domain to understand what capabilities are required and to understand who is best positioned to provide those. Part of the conversation around who is best positioned to provide them is about understanding the interests of the private entity behind them.
I share your concern. I think the issues with Starlink in Ukraine should act as a wake-up call, if you like, for that potential future challenge.
6:20 p.m.
NDP
Lindsay Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
This is open to both of you as academics. How does it further impact academia's access to research when it's fully commercialized or dominated by only one company?
6:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Thank you, Ms. Mathyssen.
We have 20 minutes, so that's four minutes each. We're in a four-minute round.
Go ahead, Mrs. Gallant.
6:25 p.m.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
My questions are for Professor Leuprecht.
Were an adversary to spoof the U.S. GPS satellite system that we use, describe the impact it would have on our weapons and navigation systems.
6:25 p.m.
Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual
That's a great question. I don't need to describe it to you. You just need to look at the conflict between Israel and Hamas. You can see what happens when, on a large scale, entities end up jamming global positioning systems and the disruption that causes to civilian life. You have a real-life laboratory. In addition, it's not just the capability to disrupt. Of course, China, with its BeiDou constellation, has its own GPS capabilities, so it is not reliant on the North American system.
6:25 p.m.
Conservative
6:25 p.m.
Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual
Redundancy is key, and I'll give you an analogy in an area where we've made adjustments. Russia has, for over a decade, actively been jamming, as you probably know, NATO vessels. That is why, until about 2015 or so, the U.S. Navy relied entirely on GPS systems and why the U.S. Navy went back to star navigation, the capability to operate without GPS.
One of the risks that we currently have is a single point of failure if all we do is rely on U.S.-based GPS capabilities. That is why redundancy is important and why multidomain capabilities are important. It's so that, as we do in any other domain of warfare, we never have just one single system on which we are reliant. I'm concerned about the overreliance in Canada on potential single points of failure in space.
6:25 p.m.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Don't we have a backup the way the U.S. Navy has the star navigation system?
6:25 p.m.
Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual
I'd better let the Canadian Armed Forces speak to the redundancy capabilities we have.
6:25 p.m.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
When Russia deploys an anti-satellite weapon into space, such as putting multiple nuclear weapons in orbit, does Canada or any ally have the right to disable the weapon if it poses an imminent threat to our satellites?
6:25 p.m.
Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual
I'm afraid I don't have an answer for you. You'd need to ask the JAG about the international law constraints and our own legal constraints.
As I pointed out in my opening statement, I'm concerned that we in Canada have not done enough heavy lifting to precisely answer these types of questions—what our response would be and what our co-operation would be, both with the United States and among other allied partners, in particular middle-power partners. If the United States is busy in other conflicts, we need to be able to respond with other partners.
6:25 p.m.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Were a foreign adversary to hack into a satellite or a satellite network to disable or hijack it, would that constitute an act of war? What type of response would be justified on the part of Canada or any other nation this happened to that's a signatory to the outer space treaty?
6:25 p.m.
Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual
To my best understanding, the problem is that the answers to precisely these questions are currently ambiguous. For instance, NATO article 5 is not clear if it would apply, under what circumstances it would apply and what aspects, other than the five space treaties to which Canada is a signatory, would apply in this domain. This is precisely why the UN has proposed an open-ended working group on capabilities and a separate one on behaviours. There is a problem of agreement on the parameters of those working groups, but I'm confident that they will get off the ground in the very near future. Canada, of course, needs to be prepared to be a very active player, as hard as it's going to be to get an international consensus.
6:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Thank you, Mrs. Gallant.
Mrs. Lalonde, I think you're deferring your time to Mr. Fillmore.
Mr. Fillmore, you have four minutes.
6:25 p.m.
Liberal
Andy Fillmore Liberal Halifax, NS
Thanks very much, Chair.
I'd like to go a little further on the topic raised by Ms. Mathyssen, if I could.
We've heard from Dr. Hughes about what we'll call the ambiguities in the legal framework governing space security and very likely the development of shared behavioural norms, which just came up in the last question.
Dr. Leuprecht, you said that Canada must join the ongoing effort to bolster the U.S. space treaty and that multilateral diplomacy has to be a priority. Historically, space treaties have been negotiated between nation states, but as we've heard this evening, the private sector is having a more and more active role in space. It seems like the place we need to get to is where private entities and the industry sector are participating in these treaties. Is there any precedent? Do we have any tools that can help the private sector involve themselves in the treaties, such as the one you've mentioned?
Maybe we can start with Dr. Leuprecht and then go to Dr. Hughes if there's time.
6:30 p.m.
Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual
I have a short answer for you. It is actually one of the strengths that Canada has. Because we're smaller, it's much easier for government departments and agencies to talk to one another and for us to talk to both non-governmental organizations and the private sector to forge a common way forward in how we harness that. We have a comparative advantage to the United States, where, of course, it is a rather large behemoth to try to figure out where the bus is going and to get everybody on that bus.
6:30 p.m.
Liberal
Andy Fillmore Liberal Halifax, NS
In the work that you recommend we undertake with the United States on updating the space treaty, is there a role for the private sector to be present at the table?
It's to either one of you.
6:30 p.m.
Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual
I'll defer on that question in the sense that I don't know enough about the technicalities of how space treaties are negotiated.
6:30 p.m.
Liberal
Andy Fillmore Liberal Halifax, NS
Dr. Hughes, is there anything you'd like to add in answer to that?
6:30 p.m.
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Frank McKenna School of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Mount Allison University, As an Individual
Just to build a bit on Dr. Leuprecht's point, I suggest that for international discussions, a place at the table is probably not the place for private industry. However, it absolutely is the case that private industry should be heavily involved when the negotiating positions are being created by the states, because as we heard in this conversation, private industry has been so heavily involved in the development of space technology and space capabilities that having them as part of that discussion, to an extent, is going to be critical.
Also, to point to the recommendations you suggested, the first recommendation I have is that we simply need a clear articulation of our needs with regard to defence in the space domain. It is such a huge topic and brings together so many different facets of Canadian life that the articulation is not there at the moment. We have a broad collection of understandings of the consequences of action in the space domain, and to bring them together into a coherent package will be very useful.