Evidence of meeting #122 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.
Liberal
Liberal
Marcus Powlowski Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
I'm new to this committee, but it seems to me that when we're talking about defence, particularly with Arctic sovereignty, any way you slice it and dice it, it would seem that to protect the Arctic, given the vast size of our northern regions, any attempt to monitor our borders is going to involve a lot of use of satellites. Everything from monitoring the weather to communications seems to go through satellite.
Mr. Kolacz talked about cybersecurity in talking about what is seemingly anti-satellite weaponry, which I gather some countries are developing. Have you been contemplating what, if anything, you can do in terms of protection from anti-satellite weapons? It would seem to me that our defence is very much wrapped up in our satellite communications.
What, if anything, can we do to ensure that we're not totally dependent on satellites and to protect against the possibility that some other country, by taking out our satellites, could severely undermine all of our defences, particularly in the north?
Chief Executive Officer, Global Spatial Technology Solutions Inc.
Would you like me to comment on that?
Liberal
Marcus Powlowski Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
It could be either or both of you.
Go ahead, Arad, if you want to start.
Chief Executive Officer, GALAXIA Mission Systems
I think the risk of space assets being attacked cannot be negated. One of the ways we can get ahead of that is with launch responsive systems. These are the types of satellites that are ready to be launched and that have an ecosystem around them. It's not just the spacecraft itself. It's the launch vehicle that is ready to be launched, and it's the launch operation and CONOPS. These are satellites that can be up in orbit for under a month or two at times, or even less than that. One way we can get ahead of that is to have these launch responsive capabilities in place, just in case something happens, and then we have the mechanisms to be able to re-enter more spacecrafts and to add more assets to that. That's one thing I would add.
I'll pass it back to Richard.
Chief Executive Officer, Global Spatial Technology Solutions Inc.
Thank you.
Yes, that is a correct statement. However, what is the probability of somebody physically taking out a satellite? It is much less than somebody taking over a satellite electronically or disrupting the flow of information.
We currently monitor the Arctic every minute by taking a look at images and signals from a vast array of satellites. Removing all of those commercial satellites, which provide now probably over 80% of the surveillance and communications capability, is a huge challenge. Taking out certain satellites that provide strategic capability is a different thing. It is really about what the likelihood is of an event occurring and about what the impact of that event is.
Again, the activity that is going on today, which we witness across various nations, is that somebody is disrupting the flow of information. It's not a hostile act of war, but it's enough to disrupt the economy, and economic defence is national defence. It's a question of how one manages that capability.
Liberal
Marcus Powlowski Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
I take it, from what you're saying, that there might be certain value in numbers, in terms of satellites. We have enough satellites up there that taking out one or two, or a handful, of satellites wouldn't make us vulnerable, and there are enough other alternatives. Is that part of what our defence is?
Chief Executive Officer, Global Spatial Technology Solutions Inc.
It depends on what those satellites are doing. Certain satellites are very specific for detecting nuclear launches, issuing nuclear launch codes—not for us, but for our allies. Those are very specific, but if you take one of those out, we're in a totally different world. The loss of communications, navigation satellites, surveillance satellites that are up there right now.... The numbers of them provide a redundant or a certain amount of capability in itself. Having a coalition, a vast amount of capability, is a defence mechanism in itself, as opposed to having one asset.
Liberal
Marcus Powlowski Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
Is that what modern intelligence networks try to do? Do they try to ascertain which satellites are doing what? If they want to take out a satellite, they would know that. Is that something that espionage and counter-espionage do nowadays?
Chief Executive Officer, Global Spatial Technology Solutions Inc.
I can't comment on what they do nowadays. What I can say is that information can come from a vast number of sources. Some satellites can specifically look for very specific signals, and those would be a high-value target. That is correct.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Thank you, Mr. Powlowski.
I think you're reading a few too many espionage novels.
Mr. Sauvé will ask his questions in French. Before I ask him to speak, can you make sure that you're able to receive the translation?
Bloc
Louis-Philippe Sauvé Bloc LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Gharagozli, I don't think it will surprise anyone here that I am very interested in the issue of sovereignty. I'm not talking about Quebec's sovereignty, but about Canada's.
In your remarks, you mentioned the need for the country to have launch bases for satellite systems. I will leave it to my official opposition colleagues to ask questions related to national security, since my concern is more about the economy.
In Quebec, we have regions on the verge of decline that need help to ensure their economic development. Since I'm not an insider at all, here is what I want to know. What is the cost of building a launch base? How is it funded? How many jobs does it create? Finally, what are the ideal locations to build the bases in Canada, and preferably in Quebec?
Chief Executive Officer, GALAXIA Mission Systems
I am from Nova Scotia. Maritime Launch Services is an example, and it is working to build that sort of capability in Nova Scotia. What it boils down to is very simple: We are very lucky to have three coasts around our nation. Just imagine if we did not have that opportunity, if Canada were a landlocked nation, how much burden that would cost us in this day and age.
With the way that space is moving forward, at some point we're probably moving to a position at which rockets might even carry cargo around, let alone putting spacecraft into orbit. It is very important for us to have that capability and not rely on other nations to get us into that medium, space, that we do not have currently.
As I mentioned, a lot of our launch capabilities right now rely on either other nations launching from the U.S. or companies launching out of India or out of Europe, so we need to bring that back home. I cannot make any specific comments about other locations that exist—that's outside of my expertise when it comes to choosing launch locations—but it is very tricky to find those locations where you are able to build a spaceport.
As far as the capability goes, that's something we—
Bloc
Louis-Philippe Sauvé Bloc LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC
How many jobs does that generate? Does the operation of this type of facility create a lot of jobs? I imagine these are high value-added jobs, with above-average wages.
Chief Executive Officer, GALAXIA Mission Systems
Operating a spaceport is a very complex task. You have people...anywhere from underground firefighters and technicians, all the way to engineers and flight operations teams. This is, again, a very complex project, but, as you can imagine, I really draw the similarities to having a naval port in your city or province: It will bring a lot of jobs, no matter where that system is. If you have travelled to, let's say, Florida, and if you've seen the spaceport, there is an entire economy built around that. That is something that is going to happen, but....
Bloc
Louis-Philippe Sauvé Bloc LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC
So there is a need for port facilities, but not necessarily rail facilities.
Bloc
Louis-Philippe Sauvé Bloc LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC
I'm going to jump right into the other questions.
Mr. Kolacz, you talked about the potential dangers associated with satellite facilities, such as attacks on them. Again, I'm not an insider, so I'd like to know more. I'm also not asking you to give us instructions, of course, but I'd like to know how satellite facilities are attacked and how we can protect ourselves from that.
We've all seen James Bond movies, like GoldenEye. Should we be concerned about nuclear explosions aimed at destroying all electromagnetic facilities?
I would like to hear your comments on that.
Chief Executive Officer, Global Spatial Technology Solutions Inc.
Again, there are people in our defence department who can comment on that. The act of physically, intentionally destroying a satellite, I believe, constitutes an act of war, so the likelihood of that event occurring and how it can be achieved are fairly significant things. You can intentionally destroy a satellite: There are ways to do that. There are things like electromagnetic pulse that can damage satellites, and then there are the more subtle activities that can take place to disrupt your satellite, trying to alter its performance without your being aware of it. It's really a subject that is best discussed by people in the military, and even then, a lot of those capabilities—I'm no longer in uniform—cannot be discussed publicly.
Liberal
NDP
Lindsay Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
Mr. Gharagozli, there was a project that was funded by the Canadian Space Agency and developed by the Dalhousie Space Systems Lab. This was a specific project. Is there a way for the Canadian government to replicate this lab-based system? How specific was this to Dalhousie? Is this something that we can fund into greater existence, as it were, throughout our university system, so that we're investing in that education piece that we saw from Dalhousie?
Chief Executive Officer, GALAXIA Mission Systems
That was purely a Canadian Space Agency project. At the time, it was called the Canadian CubeSat project, CCP, which now has rolled into Cubics, I believe. It's a CSA-funded project that goes out to universities, and Dalhousie University was one of the 15 universities that received that. Each province received one funding of that. I cannot stress enough how important that project was to generating a lot of talent, specifically in engineering students, who graduated through that program working on those kinds of projects, and who came out with very strong backgrounds and started funnelling into our current space.
I would say that for Galaxia, almost 90% of our employees right now are the graduates who were part of that. Thanks to that project, they came out with very strong backgrounds in space.
NDP