Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for the invitation.
My father came to Canada as an immigrant seeking safety, opportunity and stability. Canada also gave that to me and to so many others, and this is why I'm starting this company here.
Today, the question is whether Canada remains a safe, sovereign and technologically capable nation or becomes dependent on others for its most critical infrastructure. This is the question the defence industrial strategy was written to answer.
As a student and a scientist, I have too often seen innovation leave Canada. Good people have left, and good ideas have emerged from elsewhere. As a founder, I decided to build a company that secures advanced manufacturing, highly skilled jobs and strategic capacity here, at home.
Reaction Dynamics isn't just a start-up. It's designed to underpin Canada's economy, sovereignty and role in allied security for decades.
I want to leave you with three problems and three things we, as industry, can offer in return.
The first problem is talent drain. The strategy puts a number on it: 125,000 new defence jobs by 2035. Those jobs will not appear on their own. They will come from keeping our best people in the country, not training them for someone else's industrial base.
The second problem is a lack of competition. Competition creates heat, and heat creates value. Invest in more than one winner. A strategy that builds national champions still needs more than one contender behind each capability. Otherwise, the champion has nothing to beat, and the country pays more for less.
The third problem is perception. We treat defence as a use case. It is not. Defence is an enabler. It is the root of navigation, communications, banking, imaging, sensing and timing. The farmer relies on it—the fisherman, emergency services, aviation and oil and gas. The defence base has always been the industrial base. They are one and the same. The strategy says this out loud when it comes to space, sensors and specialized manufacturing, etc. A modern army cannot fight without its space assets. Lose them, and you lose not only a weapon but also the backbone of the civilian economy.
Here's what the industry can offer. First, it can offer jobs and expertise only available here. Second, it can provide economic viability and banking for agriculture and energy sectors to strengthen the Canadian economy. Third, and most importantly, it can provide safety and security in Canada, and allow us to make our own decisions based on our own timelines and in our best interests and those of our allies. This is what “strategic autonomy” means in the strategy. Canada remains the only G7 country without a sovereign defence capability.
Canada's defence industrial strategy has started to change that through DRDC's launch the north program, which aims to be operational in the fourth quarter of 2028. Reaction Dynamics is one of the three companies to benefit from this funding, along with those of my two colleagues.
On that note, there are a few people I want to recognize.
The first of them are my team, my investors and my board. Without them, this company would not exist. As I speak to you, some of my engineers are at our test site preparing for our first flight. We had some very exciting testing on Friday. We stayed up until midnight. I was with the team. I'm really happy that things are moving forward.
I also want to highlight the champions who believed in space and who saw it for the strategic asset it is.
The first is Ahmad Khorshid of the IDEaS program at DRDC, whose exceptional ability to navigate the many pillars of government and breathe life into this program is why it will deliver orbital launch. Angelina Ermakov at ISED has advocated for sovereign launch since the inception of RDX, which was nine years ago. Cody Pelletier masterminded the program, identified the key needs and did so at a back-breaking pace. Last but not least is Brigadier-General Horner. His confidence means more than I can express here. His leadership in championing sovereign launch capability as a national imperative has been instrumental in securing the support and funding this industry has long needed.
Of course, there is the CSA, which has carried this country's space ambitions on its shoulders for decades, quietly and without enough credit, until a moment like this makes us look up. Lisa Campbell is a hero and a role model.
I will close with this. We cannot expect a different outcome when the outcome we are after is the product of the same processes that got us here. The strategy is the chance to change the process, and we should not waste it. Our first step to the stars is a first launch in Q4 2028, feeding into a medium-lift capability that meets this country's needs and gives Canada true space sovereignty through optionality.
The Prime Minister has asked us to be bold. Being bold is not about making better decisions. It is about accepting that on the heels of our success, we should be willing to accept failure. This is what we call autonomy. We pay it now in our own currency, or we pay it later in someone else's.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions.