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.
Chief Executive Officer, GALAXIA Mission Systems
It exists, yes. Dalhousie Space Systems Lab was just that organization. I actually started that when I was at Dalhousie. It was just the name of the organization, but the project itself that really propelled DSS was the Canadian CubeSat project, now called Cubics.
NDP
Chief Executive Officer, GALAXIA Mission Systems
I believe it still has funding, but again, honestly, it cannot get enough funding.
NDP
Lindsay Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
All right. Thank you so much.
I want to go back to what we discussed in a previous panel. There was a conversation about SMEs within the Canadian industry and the difficulty that they have in terms of a chicken-or-egg process whereby companies don't know what the Canadian government needs because they don't have security clearances, but they can't determine how they can best serve the needs of the Canadian government without those security clearances.
Can you talk about that from your company's perspective? Then I'll move to Mr. Kolacz to answer the same question.
October 29th, 2024 / 5:30 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, GALAXIA Mission Systems
Yes, I would echo exactly the same things. It is a persistent issue, I would say, across the board for companies. Specifically, I'm talking about space.
As I mentioned, new space companies are very good at inventing things. We have a very low overhead. We are very agile. We can build things very fast. However, if you don't know what needs to happen, then you are just chasing nothing.
The second issue with regard to that is that once you have these capabilities, you really need easy ways to be able to sell this to the Canadian government, to build a case that you can go international with it and make it an export product. That doesn't exist right now. Again, the models of that already exist in the U.S. for the DOD and even the Space Force.
NDP
Lindsay Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
I will go to you in a moment, Mr. Kolacz, for the other response.
You said that the Americans get around this. How do they do that?
Chief Executive Officer, GALAXIA Mission Systems
I'm not saying that they specifically get around it, but they have built very specific mechanisms to work directly with SMEs, as opposed to, for example, Raytheon, Boeing and Lockheed Martin. They have their own kind of thing going on, but—
NDP
Lindsay Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
They have specific security issues as well, maybe even bigger, but they don't deal in the semantics that we do. Is that...?
Chief Executive Officer, GALAXIA Mission Systems
I would say so. However, again, they have different mechanisms in place that are more fitted for SMEs than for bigger corporations.
Chief Executive Officer, Global Spatial Technology Solutions Inc.
From our perspective.... The reason I decided not to continue building satellites was to focus on developing applications that extract the intelligence from those satellites. Classified programs represent a small percentage of the overall space activity that goes on. The largest country, the United States, does a lot of work in that area. However, if you come from that domain, you actually sort of know the things they are looking for, apart from something very specific. You know you're looking for threat detection; you know you're looking for communications capability.
In our domain, which is focusing on developing applications using the assets, 80% of the capabilities that are available now are offered by commercial satellites. At one time, they would have been considered classified, so our focus is a bit different. We are able to provide and develop capabilities, because we know what's coming and what's up there, and we are able to satisfy a large portion of the capability.
I launched those satellites because the United States wanted an unclassified solution for tracking the ships so that it could use its funding to develop the classified system. Canada's developing an unclassified system took a lot of burden off of the classified assets that would have—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
We're going to have to leave the answer there. I'm sure that Mr. Poilievre can help out with some classifications.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
This question is posed to both of our witnesses.
Does your technology have an automatic mechanism to report anomalies, uninterrupted, that are potential threats to NORAD? If your technology detects an anomaly—a maritime anomaly, for example—is there an automatic mechanism to send that directly to NORAD, so that it appears on their screen?
Chief Executive Officer, Global Spatial Technology Solutions Inc.
From our capability at the moment, we are providing information. DND is using our system right now. I do not believe it is forwarding it on to NORAD. It could very easily be done, basically by giving them a password and logging into the system, detecting threats, unclassified, based on the pattern of live analytics of a vessel, for example, entering the Canadian EEZ.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
NORAD would have to log in. There's no way for them not to have to just go surfing for one of these anomalies.
Chief Executive Officer, Global Spatial Technology Solutions Inc.
No. This system is operating today.
In fact, when the war with Ukraine started, I listened to the Minister of Defence say they'd like to know where all of the Russian vessels are and what they're doing, and how many years it'll take to do that. I directed my team to start providing that information immediately, free of charge, to the Government of Canada. We've been doing that for the last three years, saying, “We have that information right now, and here are the vessels and here are the threats.” That technology is available right now.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Is it able to detect these shadow vessels that are transporting Russian oil to buyers?
Chief Executive Officer, Global Spatial Technology Solutions Inc.
Yes, it can.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
In the event that Canada were to be engaged in hostilities with a foreign actor, how can your product or service be of use to defend Canada and assist our armed forces in successfully performing their mission in combat, besides what you've already mentioned?
Chief Executive Officer, Global Spatial Technology Solutions Inc.
The primary one is being able to detect vessels that are a risk or a threat, or whether those are vessels running an embargo. Ships are using it today when they go to an operating area, to identify a vessel that may be smuggling drugs, weapons or people. That pattern of life analytics that we are doing with our system today using unclassified space assets is in operation today. In fact, we've been deployed on Canadian warships operating in international operational capabilities, as well as to organizations ashore.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Have you been impacted by a cyber-attack?
Chief Executive Officer, Global Spatial Technology Solutions Inc.
I'm sorry. Did you ask if we have been?
Conservative