To date, we have not.
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.
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, Global Spatial Technology Solutions Inc.
To date, we have not.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Okay.
These questions also apply to your company.
Do you have a means of signalling automatically to NORAD or Canadian defence any anomalies that you detect?
Chief Executive Officer, GALAXIA Mission Systems
The way we are designing our spacecraft and all the environment around it is very software driven in a sense. That means we can take any sort of information and relay it into any C3 software. It could be posted into that or any other platforms that our clients would use. It is portable for sure.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
If it were a notification, would it help to be automatic? Would it not be useful?
Chief Executive Officer, GALAXIA Mission Systems
Yes, it is automatic. I'm just saying that the destination is up to the client, where it needs to go. It can be implemented so that it can automatically be a text message to your phone if you want.
October 29th, 2024 / 5:35 p.m.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Okay.
The defence organizations would have to subscribe to that service.
Do they?
Conservative
Conservative
Liberal
Marie-France Lalonde Liberal Orléans, ON
Thank you very much.
I want to say thanks to both of you for being here.
I'm going to try to summarize one thing that I would like to hear from you, and I hope you can give us some guidelines.
We've talked a lot about space and what's in space, 80% commerce, a lot of commerce aspect versus defence component—dual use. I think my colleague was making reference to an international governance body. Are we too late?
Canada is championing many initiatives through yourself, industries. I'm wondering, on a larger scale, what the role of Canada could be in helping develop some international governance in the space component. Is it a NATO? Where would you see this in our role as Canadians?
Chief Executive Officer, GALAXIA Mission Systems
I would say space by nature is a very peaceful environment. The Canadian Space Agency is doing a splendid job with that currently. The president is Lisa Campbell. Those are the conversations that the Canadian Space Agency is usually having with our counterparts in the European Space Agency, with NASA and with other nations. We are having those conversations, and again, especially with the G7 countries. We are definitely having those conversations.
Chief Executive Officer, Global Spatial Technology Solutions Inc.
From my perspective, there are a number of policies that Canada has in place: privacy policies, AI policies, Remote Sensing Space Systems Act policies. We comply with those as well as with European policies related to artificial intelligence, the distribution of information and what kind of information.
What we see at the moment is that Canada is active in those areas. It does provide the guardrails, the policy, and the privacy framework to ensure that the information is distributed in such a way it that aligns with Canadian objectives.
Liberal
Marie-France Lalonde Liberal Orléans, ON
From my understanding, you wouldn't see a bigger international governance body that would help structure what our G7 partners and allies are doing overall in the space component.
Chief Executive Officer, Global Spatial Technology Solutions Inc.
Again, we focus on the intelligence derived from those space assets, and what we see is there is a harmonization. There is nothing that is drastically different. There are elements that are slightly different, but we see that Canada is harmonized with the rest of the world in terms of developing those policies and regulations.
Liberal
Marie-France Lalonde Liberal Orléans, ON
Okay, and I'm going to leave you both with this. Is there anything that you could recommend to this committee that would help us develop some recommendations for the government?
Mr. Kolacz.
Chief Executive Officer, Global Spatial Technology Solutions Inc.
Again, given that we are an organization that derives intelligence from the assets that are up there, what I have found working with the Space Agency and the defence department is that projects that allow us to demonstrate the validity of what we do are extremely useful. They're worth 10 times the amount of money we get. We're developing new capabilities to manage vessels, for example, to support supply chain resilience and identify risks.
We've been funded under a number of different programs—Ocean Supercluster, SDTC, DRDC, IDEaS—so on the ability to validate the technology, it was the same when we worked with the Space Agency. Every time they launched a satellite, there was room for a new technology. That is invaluable, and it gives us a competitive edge, actually, over some of the other people.
We would all like to see more money, but the opportunity will be demonstrating the world's first air traffic control system for ships using satellite technology along the St. Lawrence Seaway, from the North Atlantic approaches all the way into the Great Lakes. The ability to validate and show that capability to the rest of the world is hugely important to us, and we would like to see those programs continuing.
Bloc
Louis-Philippe Sauvé Bloc LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Kolacz, your company operates in the marine sector. During this study, there has been a lot of talk about dual-use technologies. One issue that is particularly close to my heart is that of fisheries. Much has been made in the media about the use of marine animals for espionage by the Russian Federation.
Could you explain to the committee how military technologies that are developed can also be used for other purposes, such as the protection of right whales or other marine mammals?
Chief Executive Officer, Global Spatial Technology Solutions Inc.
Yes. We actually had a project with the Canadian Space Agency whereby we used optical satellites to do facial recognition on the North Atlantic right whale, which is a protected species that swims off the coast of the St. Lawrence. Why is that important? It's because when you detect a North Atlantic right whale, your ship is supposed to slow down and move over. It's like having a moose on the road when you're driving from Montreal to Ottawa. There's the impact on all of the other vehicles, which means that you can slow down the speed of your ship. You're going to save fuel, but more importantly, you're going to save emissions. Up to 200 million tonnes a year can be saved on emissions by using Google Maps for ships. That's an example of using an optical image. It's not a military capability, but it's a high-resolution capability that can be used to support dual use of systems.
We don't use any classified asset information, obviously, but it's an example of the type of technology that can be used, and it's a major part.
I should say that we've just moved our corporate headquarters to Montreal as well. Our development team is in Halifax, and we're working closely with the fantastic support that we have from the Quebec government, developing our AI capability and rolling it out to the rest of the world.
