Mr. Benoit, Chair, Mr. Gravel, Mr. McGuinty, vice-chairs, and distinguished members, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.
I'd like to offer a short statement, and I'll be pleased to answer any questions afterwards.
This short brief will touch on how space, our strategic and integrated infrastructure, supports the critical priorities of government, especially those related to this committee of geomapping and the sustainable development of the north.
Just for a moment, let's step back to the very beginning of Canada’s long and outstanding history of space nearly 50 years ago, when we became the third nation to launch a satellite, Alouette 1.
Our first scientific satellite was sent aloft as a government scientific mission to increase our understanding of the interaction of solar storms as they collide with our upper atmosphere. While these storms illuminate our northern night sky with the beautiful aurora borealis, they have the potential to wreak havoc on our electrical transmission and communications networks.
Three satellites later, with the launch of Alouette 2, and then ISIS 1 and ISIS 2, Canada and the international scientific community have produced more than 1,000 scientific papers, and at the same time developed applications that will provide advanced warning to allow us to better protect our fragile ground infrastructure.
When we speak of an integrated and fragile infrastructure, it's possible that you may be thinking of Anik F2 when it malfunctioned on October 6. This rare outage cut Internet, broadcasting, cellular, and phone services, and even ATM transactions in many communities across the north. Weather forecasters could not relay critical information to air transportation services, and control towers could not contact first responders, resulting in the cancellation of nearly 50 flights and stranding travellers for days.
The north, more than any other region of our country, because of the vast distances and the hostile and changing weather conditions faced by our citizens who live and work there, needs dedicated, robust, and redundant space-driven communications, weather, and navigation services. It needs this if it is to fully realize and capitalize its potential for sustainable development, now and in the future.
You may be aware that the Canadian Space Agency has a mandate to promote the peaceful use and development of space, advise and advance the knowledge of space through science, and ensure that space science and technology provide social and economic benefits for Canadians.
With a stable budget of $300 million annually, of which more than 70% is contracted to the Canadian space industry and academia, the agency collaborates with and supports the mandates of government departments.
The Canadian Space Agency has recently aligned its programs and organizational structure and directs its activity in full support of critical government priorities. In particular, the programs and activities of the Canadian space program support the Arctic and northern strategy; sovereignty and security and the safe navigation of ships in our icy waters; Canadian Forces deployments at home and abroad; fishing patrols and offshore pollution detection and interdiction activities; atmospheric and environmental monitoring related to precision weather forecasting and climate change; and the exploitation, development, and sustainable management of Canada’s natural resources, especially in the north.
The Canadian Space Agency does not act alone. We partner with many government departments and other space agencies to achieve common goals in support of their mandates and the priorities of government.
As an example, the Canadian Space Agency contributes $4 million annually to the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing, a division of Natural Resources Canada. They have the mandate to archive and render RADARSAT data into information products that, among others, may serve to help the sustainable development of the north.
We partner with National Defence in the design of satellites that will provide advance warning, with the capability to track vessels navigating way beyond the sight of our over-the-horizon radar. In the future this will be done on a global scale with a constellation of small satellites capable of monitoring all legal ocean-going vessels. This is critically important to actively manage fishing within our protected zones, carry out pollution interdiction, and support international anti-piracy missions.
Canada’s space-ground infrastructure is again a partnered activity shared between the agency, the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing, National Defence, and increasingly with the private sector.
Canada is at a crossroads, and in terms of leveraging future space assets, because of our geographical location, one may view this as both a privileged juncture and a strategic opportunity.
If Canada wants to take fuller advantage of some of the more than 250 satellites that will be launched by nations in the next decade, many of them capturing images over Canada and our northern extremes, we will need to soon begin to expand our integrated space-ground infrastructure. In this way, we will be better poised to ensure the development of our space infrastructure and take advantage of the capture, archiving, processing, and dissemination of this complementary data that other nations are obtaining about our own nation.
Space is a strategic asset, and spacefaring nations know they must partner in areas of mutual interest. In this respect, Canada extends the reach of its space program by actively leveraging the interests of other space agencies. We do this by pursuing missions and exchanging space-derived data, especially in sectors related to the environment, disaster management, search and rescue, and scientific research in the Arctic and the Antarctic.
As an example, in addition to our own satellites, RADARSAT and SCISAT, our scientific instruments are flying aboard American, European, Japanese, and Swedish satellites. These satellites are providing our government departments with complementary and critical space data that is, among others, improving our precision weather forecasting, monitoring the extent of flooding and crop damage, or enhancing the monitoring of the progression of spruce bud infestation and mitigation efforts being applied in western Canada.
At the same time, the private sector is using space data to pursue mining and resource exploration activities and to monitor and protect vital oil and gas pipelines, looking at subsidence around wellheads and along the length of the transmission line to market.
Tracking evidence and mapping zones subject to subsidence, such as geologically unstable areas or where the foundation is built on permafrost, is of vital interest and importance in the north, as communities advance their planning for the implementation of critical and costly infrastructure. Here too, space-based assets such as RADARSAT provide invaluable data in the support of infrastructure planning for the north.
The contributions of RADARSAT, SCISAT, and OSIRIS to the Canadian international research efforts undertaken during the International Polar Year have spurred scientific interest and research throughout Canada's vast northern expanse. The results of this intensive two-year global scientific inquiry, much of it centred on Canada's Arctic, will be unveiled to the world in the Montreal conference for IPY, the concluding conference, in April of 2012.
At the same time, with the increasing global demand for gold, precious rare earth minerals, petrochemicals, diamonds, and water, especially water, our Canadian north is witnessing an unprecedented boom in demand for prospecting, exploration, and exploitation. I have several examples of how we have integrated RADARSAT data with other georeferenced information to produce accurate maps of this intensive resource activity in the north, and I'll make sure that every member of the committee gets those examples.
At the same time, one of these products demonstrates the integration of various sources of georeferenced data to document the range of research and activities of one of our government departments, Fisheries and Oceans, as they carry out their mandate in the ice-infested waters of Canada's Arctic region. We are partnering with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in a pilot project to show how we would map the entire northern coastline and undersea continental boundaries in support of Canada's sovereignty claim over the vast expanse in the Arctic region. This project demonstrates both the power and the potential of using space assets in combination with other instruments such as airborne lidar and undersea sonar devices. A combination of these precise and varied data sources will be used to produce an accurate georeferenced mapping product of the Arctic coastline and extension of the continental shelf. The detailed accurate mapping information produced by this collaborative undertaking will be used to defend Canada's Arctic sovereignty, support our international policy agenda, and, in time, broaden our commercial interests.
Canada's use of these georeferenced products to stake our international claim will be assuring the future social and economic prosperity of all our citizens and foster the active management, protection, and exploitation of Canada's northern expanse, its coastlines, and navigable and sovereign waters coast to coast to coast.
Thank you.