As members will appreciate, earth observation essentially is a growing field that can serve a range of public policy purposes and, indeed, a range of private sector purposes as well. It is important in that context both to have the devices in space to signal back to the earth and to have the receiving stations on the ground, in order to be able to capture the images from the satellites, process them, and make them available to the users.
We have antenna facilities right now in the north, in Inuvik, and in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, and here in Gatineau. We needed to revitalize these facilities and basically buy new antennas because they were coming to the end of their lives, and they were not equipped to capture the signals from the new generation of satellites that will be launched by Canada—the new RADARSAT Constellation mission—or other satellites that will be launched from other nations. This is going to give us not only the dish, but also the infrastructure that is required, the software to convert those signals into usable information and then to disseminate it under a very open system of dissemination that we're fostering at Natural Resources Canada and in partnership with many other departments in town.