Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to the motion. The concept that the Government of Canada has not been working hard to ensure a strong aerospace industry in Canada is totally false. Canadian involvement in space and in the development of the Canadian space industry has been exemplary. The story of Canadians in space shows clearly that Canadians can solve problems.
In typical Canadian fashion we have been modest in singing the praises of Canada's accomplishments in space. I am here today to ensure that Canadian scientists, Canadian engineers and Canadian entrepreneurs get their full recognition in terms of the marvellous accomplishments they have made and are making in the name of Canada in space.
Canadians are space pioneers. More than 35 years ago Canada launched Alouette . We were the third country in space, a pioneer. It is the same today. Just last month we launched RADARSAT, the world's most sophisticated earth observation satellite. Canada is leading the world.
Last week we saw Major Chris Hadfield onboard NASA's STS-74 shuttle mission to Mir using Canadian technology to help bring together the Russian space station and the U.S. space Atlantis . The two events showcased Canadian technology to the world in an unprecedented way.
I welcome the opportunity to tell Canada's story in space and specifically to underscore today the very important role Quebec has played in this effort. Ours is an increasingly competitive world and governments cannot afford to invest time, effort and money in ventures that do not bring significant gains both to scientific knowledge and to economic and environmental benefits the world over.
Canada's space program is a growth industry, aligned with the new realities of information technology providing us not only wonderful new technology for manipulating in space but new communications technology. Canada is a world leader in this area.
The Canadian space industry provides employment for 4,000 Canadians and pulls in annual revenues of more than $500 million. Over the last decade the average annual rate of growth in the space industry has been 15 per cent, with Quebec a particularly high performer.
Over the past ten years, the space industry in Canada has grown annually by 15 per cent, with Quebec being a particularly strong performer.
The space program was established to meet Canada's needs in areas vital to our economy: telecommunications, resource management, surveillance and environmental monitoring. Satellite communications has been the way for the auto route of information, the information highway, the 20th century equivalent of the railway providing linkages that help bind the country together from one end to the other.
The Canadian space program is also driven by a desire and a political will to ensure the development of a globally competitive economy. In a fashion, all regions of the country have been able to draw on the government's space effort, to transfer space technology from government laboratories to the private sector, and to capitalize on employment and economic activity generated as a result of this visionary program.
The province of Quebec and its aerospace industry have been beneficiaries of the program. The location of the Canadian Space Agency in Saint-Hubert on Montreal's south shore is testimony to the importance of Quebec in this national effort. It underscores Montreal's international role in space, in satellite communication and in the information age.
The space agency has brought several hundred highly educated scientific people to the greater Montreal area and has added to Montreal's position as a centre of high technology. I am particularly heightened by the fact that Quebec has shown considerable leadership in the program, the industries and the people of Quebec. More than $540 million in contracts have been won by Quebec firms since 1988, which is more than 35 per cent of budget of the space program.
Quebec's leadership position in the space sector is further reinforced by strong engineering skills and industrial activities. The RADARSAT satellite was built by the Spar aerospace facility at Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, as was MSAT, an advanced telecommunications satellite scheduled to be launched in the first quarter of the next calendar year. Mission control for RADARSAT is located at the space station in Saint-Hubert.
In building the satellite Spar was able to draw on the skills of a pool of highly specialized small and medium size enterprises that provided various components of the RADARSAT satellite. In economic terms some 60 per cent of the RADARSAT program was awarded to Spar and its subcontractors. This is just the beginning of the RADARSAT story.
Presently a study is under way to look at partnership arrangements for the next generation of RADARSAT to ensure commercialization of the RADARSAT system and launch of the second RADARSAT satellite. It is significant that a major Quebec based firm has become involved. I am referring to SNC-Lavalin, a firm that has successfully established itself as a world leader in project management.
Let me take a moment to talk about Canada's RADARSAT satellite. It is a remarkable Canadian achievement to have built and successfully launched a satellite earlier this month. The satellite uses radar to allow continuous monitoring of the earth's surface. Unlike most of the previously launched earth's observation satellites which cannot see through clouds and cannot therefore monitor much of the earth's surface much of the time, RADARSAT can monitor it continuously. By using the radar it can peer through the clouds and have a continuous assessment of the nature, the events and the changes on the surface of the earth.
Not only does Canada's RADARSAT provide a complete and continuous coverage of the earth's surface but it uses an extraordinary technology developed in Canada to provide a remarkably flexible, precise and complete coverage. RADARSAT can provide full coverage of Canada's Arctic area every 24 hours, full coverage of Canada's entire land mass within three days, every three days, and full coverage of the total surface of the world, of our globe, every seven days.
RADARSAT will provide for Canada and for the world a remarkably new tool to monitor crop development, to assess the status of crops, yield, insect infestations and all sorts of other things that may happen to the crops planted and to assess the status of forests, the growth, the harvesting, the regeneration and so forth. It is a wonderful tool with the ability to monitor the world's forests and specifically help Canada better manage its own forests.
It is very important for shipping to know precisely what is happening in terms of ice conditions like those in Hudson Bay or the northern Atlantic. RADARSAT will be able to provide that. The monitoring of water conditions to better control floods during spring runoff not only in Canada but around the world is a wonderful new technology that helps people the world over to live better and have a higher quality of life.
These are but a few of the potential applications of RADARSAT. Thanks to the foresight of our government, Canadian industries now have an extraordinary commercial advantage in RADARSAT. Canadian industry is well positioned to take advantage of the benefits of the new satellite. Canadians have expertise in the technology and are now actively marketing the potential of RADARSAT, its satellite system and its earth monitoring capabilities the world over.
I want to talk for a moment about the space agency in Saint-Hubert, home to Canada's astronauts. Chris Hadfield landed yesterday at the Kennedy Space Centre after a seven-day mission of historical dimensions. Here again Canadian content in a mission characterized by NASA as one of the most technically demanding ever undertaken by the shuttle program was significant owing to the Canadian role, the role of Canadian technology and Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, in bringing together the United States and Russia, the world's two space superpowers, in a successful partnership in space.
Marc Garneau, the first Canadian in space, paved the way for future Canadian flights on the shuttle. He will once again be space bound next year. Julie Payette is continuing her training and we expect this will lead to a flight opportunity in the years to come.
Canadian astronauts provide a wonderful role model for young Canadians. They are very important in a world where such role models are too infrequent. It is particularly significant as we try to promote the development of the science culture to have role models like Chris Hadfield, Marc Garneau and Julie Payette.
On behalf of the Government of Canada, the hon. Minister of Industry and I unveiled the second long term space plan in June 1994. We reconfirmed that Canada would be a significant contributor in space in the future. We reconfirmed that Canada would make a significant contribution to the international space station program, the largest scientific endeavour ever undertaken in the history of the world.
The program will break new ground in fields as diverse as biotechnology, physiology, material science and fluid physics, a new era in understanding space medicine, to name just a few. Canada will provide the technology that will make possible the assembly and maintenance of the world's science and technology institute in space. The operations of the Canadian contribution, the mobile servicing system, a leading edge robotics system, will be located in the space agency's facility in Saint-Hubert. Astronauts and space station operators from around the world will come to Saint-Hubert to train and to become knowledgeable about this very sophisticated and, one could say, intelligent robotic system.
I am proud to have been associated with the Canadian space program.
I am very proud to be associated with the Canadian space program.
Since we have become the government we have been privileged to participate in and lead many initiatives to ensure the continued prosperity of Canada and the Canadian Space Agency, to ensure the continuity of our Canadian astronaut program, to ensure a continued place for Canada in space, in new technology, in communications. Canadians are justifiably proud of our accomplishments. We should all be pleased with the social and economic benefits that come from this national effort. In today's information economy, we are indeed fortunate that Canada has such a strong space program.
In closing, let me emphasize once more the important role and the foresight our government has played in leading the Canadian space effort. It has mobilized an effort that will transfer increasingly some extraordinary technology to Canadian industry and provide at the same time the technology that will help us monitor and improve the global environment.
This is our future, this is Quebec's future, this is Canada's future.