The Hon. Lisa Raitt is joined by Space Canada CEO, Brian Gallant, to talk about the ambitions of Space Canada, the economic opportunities from the commercialization of space, and why Canada can be a world leader in this sector.
Lisa Raitt: Thank you for tuning in to The Raitt Stuff. I'm your host Lisa Raitt and in this podcast I'm going to share insights on current hot topics in the areas of public policy, politics and business, with some guests along the way. And welcome back to The Raitt Stuff. Today I have with me Brian Gallant, who is the CEO of Space Canada. He was the 33rd Premier of New Brunswick. He's also a special advisor to the president of Ontario Tech University. And we're going to talk a little bit about that today. Iknow the Premier because he frequently provides business and political analysis as a media commentator for Radio Canada. But as well, I think he's on pound for pound the best panel on CTV, which is myself, Mr. Gallant and Mr. Mulcair and Robert Benzie from Toronto Star. Brian, I'm so glad you could join me today to talk about all things space.
Brian Gallant: Thank you so much for having me and we're incredibly biased, but I will certainly echo your feelings towards our panel. And it is really a highlight of my professional week whenever I get the chance to be with you all. So thank you for mentioning.
Lisa Raitt: Brian, thanks for joining us. It's been a busy couple of weeks in terms of government announcements. This Carney government has hit the ground running.And they are definitely spreading out a lot of markers in terms of what their promises are. But one of the things that I find really interesting is how hard they're going on in defense. And I immediately thought about the work that you're doing at Space Canada. It's not all about defense, but there's definitely going to be an aspect to it. So I thought, first of all, we should just start with, why don't you tell us about the work that you're doing at Space Canada?
Brian Gallant: Thank you for the opportunity. look, Space Canada is an organization that represents over 90 members. We're membership driven and these 90 members are Canadian space innovators. So they are multinationals and startups, everything in between. They are academic institutions. They are not-for-profits, think tanks, people that are completely immersed and engaged in space or people that are interested in getting involved in the Canadian space sector. And we also have international members that obviously have a footprint or interest in Canada. And what we do, we essentially want to strengthen the Canadian space ecosystem. So anything that we can do to help make it better. So, that includes promoting the sector. That includes trying to enhance collaboration within the sector, but also with key stakeholders. It's advocating for the sector with governments. It's ensuring that we have the international presence that we want for Canada to be able to flourish in this sector. And it's also raising awareness to the public in general, but also key stakeholders as to why space is important. So that's essentially what we do. And it's a wonderful opportunity for me to learn about something that I think is inspiring, but also the economics of space have changed over the last little while, and it's making it a very important sector. So for me, it's exciting to try to help Canada see some of those opportunities and overcome some of the challenges as well.
Lisa Raitt: I agree. And I made this mistake early on. You're not the Canadian Space Agency. There's a difference between the two of you.
Brian Gallant: The best way to describe it is we kind of represent everybody else in the Canadian space ecosystem. And then CSA, the Canadian Space Agency equivalent to NASA for Canada is its own entity. We of course work with them, we advocate towards them. We try to enhance collaboration with them and other government departments as well with industry, academia, researchers and more. But, but yes, that's exactly right. We're kind of everyone else except the CSA.
Lisa Raitt: Yeah. In my generation, you're younger than me and your generation too, probably. When we think about space, you normally think about countries, right? You think about the NASA, you think about CSA, you think about government entities sending people up into the atmosphere, but it's not that way anymore. And we have Amazon, Jeff Bezos, you've got Elon Muskthose folks are now actually commercializing space and it's becoming quite a different sector than what it was. Why don't you tell me a little bit about how Canada can play a role? We're very proud of the work that we did with the Canada Arm. No question about it. But what other areas can Canadians and Canadian companies get into if we prioritize space?
Brian Gallant: I think you eloquently put the challenge that we have as a sector on the table, right? We are faced with the idea that when Canadians think about space, they think about exploration. They think about the amazing feats of humanity over the last few decades. They think about, yes, the Canada arm. They think about stuff that we're going to see in the future with Jeremy Hansen, CSA astronaut, go with his American counterparts in the Artemis mission, right? So those things are so important, inspiring, cool, just something that really captures our imagination that it takes up so much oxygen, pun, absolutely intended. And that's great and it's wonderful and I think it has a lot of benefit for the sector for people to be interested in that. But because it takes up so much room,we then have to sort of follow up quickly with, yes, that's all awesome and that, and we want to be a part of that and we need to do cool things there. But there's also all this other stuff happening, as you mentioned, the commercialization of space. So there are immense economic opportunities being created by space every single year. And we see the global space sector projected to grow exponentially over the next two decades, going from somewhere just a few years ago, about 600 billion a year to 2 trillion by 2040, some are projecting, some are projecting 1.8 trillion by 2035. So immense economic opportunity. And when people are trying to fathom what that means, exploration is a part of that, but also it's earth observation, which helps us protect our oceans, our coastlines, which help first responders deal with and mitigate natural disasters.It's about ensuring that we are protecting our sovereignty and for Canada specifically, which you referenced at the beginning, helping us protect the Arctic and protect the North, protect our coastlines. It is about space mining eventually, which will be a huge economic driver. It's about developing ways that we can stay in space longer for longer durations. And that will include figuring out SMRs and hydrogen to deliver power. And how do we deliver health care in the most remote area you could possibly think of, which is space. What can we learn from those applications to deliver healthcare in remote areas in Canada and around the globe? It's about telecommunications, providing digital connectivity to communities in northern Canada, in Indigenous communities, in rural and remote communities. The list goes on. So there are immense economic opportunity. Canada is well-placed to seize them, but everybody recognizes that there's immense opportunity. So we really need to ensure that we step up and get our act together.
Lisa Raitt: Yeah, that's true. And as well, to your point about Indigenous communities, I had a conversation about a year ago with the leadership of Marten Falls, which is in the Ring of Fire in Northern Ontario. And what they had done was they found it more economical just to provide everybody, all the houses, a Starlink. And that's their connectivity. That's how their kids can do work. That's how they can be part of the global community. From a national security point of view, it'd be nice to have a Canadian homegrown company to be able to do that stuff instead of always relying upon the United States.
Brian Gallant: 100%. And it's interesting, just last week, I was in the plane coming back from you and I appearing at the Senate on Bill C-5. And I was talking to somebody who sort of recognized me and just was asking what I was up to now. And I talked about the space sector and he made that exact point, literally that exact point. I don't want to out this person, but somebody that works for the RCMP and basically said, yeah, you do Starlink. We've used it, but... would it ever be nice to have a Canadian option given everything that's going on, not only the personalities behind Starlink, but also for the security and just sort of national economic security as well. So then you think about, you named Amazon as well, you think about the fact that in Ottawa, we have Telesat that is competing with these companies. They are delivering, working on delivering a program called Lightspeed, which will have 198 LEO satellites. And it promises to deliver the fastest and really the strongest performing connectivity to Canada, but other parts of the world as well. These are the types of massive economic opportunity that can come. And it's really interesting because there's the project itself that Talasat is putting forward and the economic opportunity of that. But then just providing that connectivity in a secure way, in a way that we feel good about our national interests, the communities helps them as individual communities that are trying to figure out how to thrive in today's economy, be able to have that connectivity that they need and let alone the idea of the economic opportunity that it will help create, but also just being able to get the services that they need to be able to have a good quality of life. So, there's so many layers to how space will help. And then the last one is, I always like to make, I obviously try to be an optimist, especially when you talk about space, it's so inspiring, but then you have to kind of flip it. And that was a bit of your question. If we don't do some of this stuff, what position will we be in? What position will we find ourselves in from an economic security point of view if we don't have any of the infrastructure needed to be able to flourish in that type of economy where space is essentially the backbone, like overused term, but in this case, literally and figuratively the backbone of our economy.
Lisa Raitt: Yeah, you know, we're just coming out of the G7, the EU agreement between Canada and the EU. We have the NATO meetings that have wrapped up. And in amongst all of this, of course, we have the president of the United States referring to Canada joining something called the Golden Dome. I worry that that's going to take over the commentary around what really are the economic advantages of space for Canada and what the global space race is, because it's going to get derailed by something which is very different from what you and I are talking about right now. So let us know how Space Canada, how the companies and the members you represent can help Canada hit its NATO spending commitment that is not necessarily attached to what President Trump was talking about.
Brian Gallant: Let's start off by the importance of hitting that target. And I don't know if you remember this, Lisa, you, myself and Tom Mulcair, we were all on a panel, I'd say a year ago, publicly saying that we need to, as a country, hit the NATO target. It's a commitment we made years ago. It should have been a priority then. And certainly given the dynamics with our trade conflict with the U.S., whether you want to sort of demonstrate that we can stand on our own or you want to demonstrate to the US that we're going to be a solid partner, either way that you see it, investing in hitting our target for NATO spending makes sense. And if you want to be able to show your allies that we're going to step up and we want to diversify sort of our work with allies, making sure that we're stepping up in a thoughtful way when it comes to NATO is a good way to do it. So let's start with that backdrop. So we're very supportive as an organization of the Carney government's commitment to get there in the next year. We can help immensely. The space sector can help in a lot of ways. There's the idea of protecting the Arctic, which is something Canada should absolutely, positively, from a self-interested point of view, do. We can just almost stop the conversation there. We should do a better job of protecting our Arctic, and space-based capabilities is going to be pivotal in doing that. You can then make sub-arguments if you really need to. I don't think you should have to, but let's make them anyways. The US has long asked Canada to step up on the Arctic. I'm not a defense expert or anything, but from what I've heard when listening to experts, essentially what's sort of at the heart of that is obviously to have the protection that it would help the North America and the US get from Canada stepping up on protecting the Arctic, but also the US would feel they'd be able to then maybe take some of the capabilities they have with regards to the Arctic and deploy that somewhere else if Canada was stepping up. And then the third thing is the idea that by doing that, we are going to be showing the world that we are serious about our sovereignty at a time when the Arctic, and the Arctic's always been important, but all that much more given the geopolitical shifts, geopolitical moves, and due to climate change, for those listening, that are essentially making that the Arctic will now have very important multi-country interested channels for people to be able to use. So that's going to make the Arctic all that much more strategic moving forward. And then the other aspect, we can do other things. That's sort of the very obvious one, but we can do many other things with regards to Earth observation, with regards to telecommunications when it comes to defense. And what I would argue, given the sort of need to step up quickly, we can ask the space sector to deliver products and services rapidly. You could get a company to deliver something over the next few months. Whereas if you're looking to invest in strategic defense spending to meet your NATO target, you may find yourself saying, we're going to invest in XYZ, and it's going to actually take us, in terms of procurement, five years, 10 years, 12 years, so we can actually deploy very useful strategic space-based capabilities to help our defense and security ambitions rapidly. And then the last point I'll make is there's the wonderful way in which investing in space innovation then can spin off into other research and development opportunities, other innovations, dual use, which will help our economy and help our quality of life in Canada and other ways as well.
Lisa Raitt: And going back to the fact that you're a special advisor to the president of Ontario Tech University, sometimes you have to show the next generation of academics and students that there's a really cool part of research out there that Canada is a big part of that they can get involved in and it can inspire them.
Brian Gallant: 100%. Thanks for mentioning Ontario Tech University, a wonderful institution, very entrepreneurial. And I think really trying to help Canada and the world figure out one of the challenges of our time, it's how do we have tech with a conscience? How do we ensure that we are developing thoughtful, innovative technology in a way that it's going to benefit humankind, that it's going to benefit our country, that it's going to benefit citizens and communities. What an important question of our time. And to have an institution that is really geared towards that I think is wonderful. So I'm honored to be a part of their work and do what I can to add some value.
Lisa Raitt: I have to ask you though, are we going to have launch capabilities in Canada? You know, I'm from Nova Scotia, I keep hearing about Canso. What's going on?
Brian Gallant: Yeah, so it's interesting because as I was rattling off things that we can do in space, I thought to myself, I forgot to mention launch. And you kind of forget it because we don't have the capability right now. And that is a problem. It's a problem because given the importance of space as already sort of discussed, we want to have a domestic capability from end to end. We want to be able to say if the world shut down around us for whatever reason or parts of it shut down, for whatever reason, we can go at it alone if needed. Not that we want to. I think space in all domains, Canada is a very collaborative country and in space very much so. And I'd say the space sector is an internationally recognized sector that people really want to collaborate. I think we need to keep at it with that in mind. But if the world shuts down around us, also given the crucial strategic nature of space need to be able to have an end to end sector. The lack of domestic space launch is a challenge for us to be able to do that. And we have wonderful projects in Atlantic Canada trying to happen with maritime launch services. There's another company called Nordspace looking at Newfoundland. So that I think would be wonderful. And my sense is that we should have a few of these around the country as well. And having some in the sort of the West or in central Canada would make sense too. So for me, it would be wonderful for us to have that domestic launch space capability. And in doing so, we would be ensuring, I think, our economic security by having that end-to-end capability.
Lisa Raitt: And like you said during this interview, space isn't just about exploration. It's about the environment. It's about communications. It's about hard defense, if it needs to be about hard defense. And it's about national security in a lot of ways as well. So a real broad area to discuss. And I'm grateful you came on today. But I'd be remiss, Brian, if we didn't remember somebody that we lost in the past month who was an incredible force, an icon, a trailblazer in all things. And was part of your flavor of politics, not my flavor, but I was honored to work across the aisle from him. And of course, that's Mark Garneau. Anything you want to share about Mark Garneau since you probably work close to him.
Brian Gallant: That's so nice of you to raise his memory and his contributions. I couldn't believe the news. He's just somebody that is sort of superhuman in my mind. I've gotten the chance to know him in different respects, as you mentioned, sort of through liberal politics and work that we did when we were both in government. And then with the idea of obviously of me jumping into the space sector and him being the icon in Canada for space. He was just seen as superhuman. So, we were actually, Lisa, I haven't really mentioned this to anyone, we were actually at our Outlook event, Space Canada's event called Horizons when the news broke. And it literally had, we were at a social and it was a room filled with people that care deeply about the Canadian space ecosystem. And it was a bit of a shock, as you can imagine, to everyone, but also at the same time, the timing meant that we were all together and this community that owes him so much and that loves him so much and that he contributed so much to it throughout his career, even when in government, post-government and of course before. So it was, I think, fitting that we were all together at that very moment when we learned of his passing. So certainly thinking about his family and his contributions, no question will go on forever and he'll be remembered as the superhuman he was.
Lisa Raitt: And his words of advice to us, which is keep trying, keep forging ahead and take the risk that you need to take to do good things. So I hope you in Space Canada do great things and I hope you make it to the top of the economic agenda of the Carney government and looking forward to… maybe we should get Malcair to come on and we'll do a podcast together and we'll talk about, we'll talk about something else. Yeah, that'll be a lot of fun.
Brian Gallant: That would be good, yeah. Take the show on the road, I like it.
Lisa Raitt: Okay. Thanks very much, Brian. And lovely to have you on and really appreciate you talking to our to our clients today.
Brian Gallant: Thank you, Lisa. Until next time.
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