The Canadian Space Agency continued a flat spending trend in 2020, this as other major foreign space programs continue to ramp up spending.
The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) 2020-21 Departmental Results Report (DDR) is now available, though its release was delayed.
The most noticeable item from the report is that actual spending on what the CSA calls its “Core Responsibility,” meaning programs and labeled Canada in Space, was $272 million down from $273.3 the previous year.
Of note the planned spending was to have been $342.3 million as listed in their 2020-21 Departmental Plan. Why the difference? In an email exchange with SpaceQ, the CSA said that there was a “$68.9 million of planned carry-over from 2019-20 to 2020-21.” They then went on to say that the 2020-21 DDR “does not include the $68.9 million in planned carry forward from 2019-20 to 2020-21.”
To put that into english; We didn’t spend the money in fiscal year 2019-20, and so we’re planning to move it to fiscal year 2020-21. In the end we didn’t include that money.
This is an ongoing and regular occurrence with government planned spending.
Total spending for the CSA’s Core Responsibility (Canada in Space) and Internal Services was $330,409,653. In looking at actual spending by the government through the Canadian Space Agency over the past 20 years we see a picture that does not equate into a robust civil space program. With inflation, actual spending is down. The only period it went up was a result of the RADARSAT Constellation Mission program. Add in that other national space programs are seeing impressive spending increases and the results is that Canada’s place vis-a-vis other nations, is falling.
The one upside is that Canada has committed $2.05 billion over 24 years on a lunar program and is beginning to spend some of that money. However, while that sounds all rosy, the fact remains that spending on other programs such as astronomy, Earth observation etc. is flat or down. I can image the thoughts of those who’ve been advocating for more funding in areas many see as needing it saying, that $68.9 million that wasn’t spent would surely be well spent in my area.
Another item to note from the report is that spending on Internal Services is up again (10.4%), and keeps going up. The CSA characterizes Internal Services as “those groups of related activities and resources that the federal government considers to be services in support of programs and/or required to meet corporate obligations of an organization.” This includes money for “full-time equivalents (FTE),” meaning hiring people.
The cost to support programs is going up while spending on programs is flat or going down, depending on the year. Oh, and for this DDR, new people are being hired to support Internal Services (+14.4 FTE) while Core Responsibility (-9.9 FTE) hires are down.