Telesat Welcomes and Echoes Recommendations in the Space Advisory Board’s Report: Canada’s Future in Space: What We Heard

 

August 21, 2017

Telesat welcomes the release of the Space Advisory Board’s report: Canada’s Future in Space: What We Heard and is particularly pleased to see a number of important recommendations reflected in the report including, the need to establish a whole of government, new space policy for Canada that is funded and supports, promotes and prioritizes the Canadian space sector.

“The Canadian space sector has a long history of contributing to Canada’s economic and employment growth,” said Dan Goldberg, President and CEO of Telesat. “Actively promoting and prioritizing the Canadian space sector for our own government and private citizen satellite communication requirements, as our like-minded allies around the world have done, will create and support employment, spur innovation and enhance the competiveness of our domestic firms while improving export opportunities.”

Telesat is also pleased to see an emphasis on procuring, to the extent possible, space services from Canadian industry (rather than acquiring, launching and operating space systems) to meet government needs. This approach promotes private sector investment while shifting the fiscal, schedule and operational risks of space procurements away from the government and the taxpayer, to commercial enterprises, employing the same, highly successful model used with their own sophisticated commercial customers.

This is exactly the same model Telesat has proposed to the government to provide access to secure, highly reliable and high-capacity narrow and wideband telecommunications services on a 24 by 7 basis throughout the entire Arctic region where none exists today. Known as the Enhanced Satellite Communications Project – Polar, Telesat has proposed a Made-in-Canada solution by forming a consortium of Canadian companies who are all global leaders in their respective fields to deliver an innovative, world-class technical solution and service delivery model.

“Telesat, acting as the Prime Contractor and Service Provider, would design, procure, deploy, operate and maintain the satellites and ground segments as well as provide operations support for which the government would pay a recurring fee for the satellite communication services. This is precisely the type of procurement that supports government objectives while investing in Canada’s domestic space industry,” said Mr. Goldberg.

With the release of the report by the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED), the government has highlighted the importance of establishing a whole of government space strategy to support the Canadian space sector to ensure that it can remain competitive, viable and relevant in the decades ahead.