Thank you.
I am an Inuk woman from Iqaluit, Nunavut, in high tech and innovation. I'm actively involved in transformative technologies in the areas of transportation, energy, telecommunication and digital infrastructure. As the chief operating officer of CanArctic Inuit Networks, I and my partners are committed to build 3,000 kilometres of marine fibre optic cable into Canada's Arctic and to connect with as many existing or proposed fibre networks. As the chief executive officer of SednaLink Marine Systems, we would transform segments of SednaLink fibre optic into a SMART cable. What is that? It's a cable with sensors in order to monitor marine climate changes and to assist with environmental monitoring, especially near marine-protected areas, as well as assist with collecting marine intelligence.
I am also a special adviser to Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, and I sit as an indigenous member at the nuclear energy leadership table, a group of mostly CEOs and presidents of energy or power corporations who have signed onto Canada's SMR action plan advancing the potential of micro and small modular reactors to provide a full energy solution throughout our country including in rural, remote and northern Canada.
I am also a director with the Canadian Arctic Innovation Association, which undertook and completed a similar report done by DND into the viability of airships for commercial and surveilling perspectives.
The reason I am in these spaces is the necessity of our northern communities to have basic or fundamental infrastructure related to transportation, energy and telecommunications, including data, digital infrastructure. At the same time, we need these investments to be dual purpose or multi-purpose insomuch as being able to assist with local security to national security, security as it relates to reliable, stable, abundant and affordable energy that supports economic development opportunities, but also powers other infrastructure, whether it is fibre, ground stations or data centres. We need that for all-domain awareness.
We need to be able to assist with security as it relates to reliable, stable, abundant and affordable telecommunications—telecommunications that not only allow us northerners to communicate with individuals within our communities, our regions and the rest of Canada and the world, but also the infrastructure that supports economic development and our Canadian Armed Forces when they are based in or come into our region, whether for their annual exercises, to respond and support search and rescue, or to also support our defence requirements for all-domain awareness.
In order for Canada to fulfill its sovereignty, it needs to know who is in our northern and Arctic spaces from seabed to space. This means being able to monitor in real time, but also to notify those coming into Canada's domain and, if necessary, to be able to deploy resources to defend or strike.
It also means infrastructure or assets to collect and process huge amounts of data from seabed to space in our marine environment, on the ground or in the air. We need fibre optic networks. We need fibre going into and through strategic routes of Canada's northern Arctic regions. Satellite, of course, also has a role to play, but nothing beats fibre with respect to being able to move large amounts of data, everything from regular telecommunications to photos, video imagery and audio. We also need strategic ground stations, and attached to those stations should be data centres in the Arctic, but that requires energy. Every second counts when you are monitoring and defending Canada's sovereignty. We need to be able to download that data and ideally understand what it means.
We also know that the future, as others have said, is now. We also need AI, sensors and robotics, from both unmanned autonomous aircraft—drones—to unmanned underwater vehicles that monitor or do more than protect, defend and strike in order to protect themselves, but also we need those critical infrastructures and assets.
Historically, Canada's investments in the north have been as cheap as possible and more often than not, not being cheap, have not even been meeting their objectives, because politicians and bureaucrats love fulfilling political objectives focused on the look and photo ops, rather than what's needed or necessary.
Thank you.