The federal government is asking global investors to help finance four Canadian space-sector projects as part of the Canada Investment Summit that opened in Toronto on Monday. One company though has a CapEx figure we haven’t see publicly yet which is of interest.
Prime Minister Mark Carney first announced the summit on April 17, pitching it as a way to help catalyze a trillion dollars in investment in Canada over five years. He returned to the theme Sunday evening at a welcome reception at the Royal Ontario Museum. “We have what the world wants,” he told the crowd. “The energy, the resources, the talent, the technology, the capital.”
The summit’s main program opened Monday and runs through Tuesday, drawing more than 100 institutional investors responsible for allocating over $100 trillion in capital.
Four out of 167
There are 167 individual projects in the government’s investment prospectus, a 66-page pitchbook published ahead of the summit and organized into eight sector chapters: conventional energy, clean energy, minerals and metals, marine and port infrastructure, power and utilities, digital technology, advanced manufacturing, and transportation. None of the eight is space.
Three of the four space-related entries sit inside the advanced-manufacturing chapter, next to drone-engine and defence-optics proposals. The fourth, CSMC’s nuclear reactor is filed under power and utilities.
What’s being pitched
| Project | Company | Chapter | Prospectus price tag |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lightspeed LEO Constellation | Telesat | Advanced Manufacturing | $7.2 billion ($US 5.2 billion) |
| Deployable Optics for Trusted, Sovereign ISR | Wyvern | Advanced Manufacturing | $230 million |
| Spaceport Nova Scotia | Maritime Launch Services | Advanced Manufacturing | $250 million |
| Micro-Modular Reactor Platform | Canadian Strategic Missions Corp. | Power and Utilities | $247 million ($US 178 million) |
Two of the four are telling investors something they might not already know. The other two mostly restate what SpaceQ has already reported.
Telesat’s entry is as expected Lightspeed, its low-Earth-orbit broadband network, priced in the prospectus at $7.2 billion ($US 5.2 billion). Lightspeed is fully funded, with satellites in production and set to launch later this year toward global service in the first quarter of 2028. What’s new is the ask: Ottawa is offering investors a minority equity stake in Telesat itself, or in the Lightspeed program specifically, with dedicated national capacity and ground infrastructure reserved for sovereign investors.
SpaceQ reported in August that Lightspeed’s satellite count grew by nearly half after a summer expansion, a build-out Telesat is now paying for with a heavier capital budget.
Wyvern’s is the more surprising of the two entries.
Wyvern’s CapEx
Wyvern’s entry carries a “total estimated” $230-million price tag for a program to build deployable optics — lenses and mirrors that unfold once in orbit, letting a small satellite carry a larger aperture than it could launch fully extended. The Edmonton company’s technology sits in the middle of the technology-readiness scale engineers use to rate how proven a technology is, with a fine-adjustment stage still ahead to align the optics after deployment.
SpaceQ could not find that figure disclosed publicly before. Wyvern’s largest previously reported public award, a federal defence grant for similar hyperspectral-imaging and reconnaissance work SpaceQ reported on in March, was $3 million — a fraction of a quarter-billion-dollar program.
The other two entries in the prospectus don’t carry any surprises.
Maritime Launch Services’ Spaceport Nova Scotia lists a $250-million price tag, anchored by Canada’s Department of National Defence and Germany’s Isar Aerospace. SpaceQ reported earlier this month that Maritime Launch and Isar were behind on the underlying agreement for that launch complex, though we expect an update this week.
Canadian Strategic Missions Corporation’s Micro-Modular Reactor Platform, priced at $247 million ($US 178 million), is the same portable-reactor line the company unveiled Sept. 10.
Kepler’s pitch
Kepler Communications has no project in the prospectus, but chief executive Mina Mitry is one of several confirmed speakers — and the only one from the space sector — at the Canadian Global Growth Forum, a venture-capital showcase the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association organized for Sept. 14 to reach the same investors gathering in Toronto for the summit. The forum runs separately from the government’s own program.
Carney also told that crowd Sunday evening that a number of deals had already been signed, The Canadian Press reported. “There is a new consensus from Iqaluit to Victoria to Quebec City and St. John’s,” he said. “Canada is taking control of our future. We will build more, we will trade more with each other and the world, and we will create more sustainable prosperity here at home.”