Canada and France have directed their space agencies and defence ministries to develop and share space-launch and ground infrastructure, Prime Minister Mark Carney and French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday — a push that already includes a new contract for the French firm Aldoria to supply Canada’s military with space-surveillance data.
The two leaders met in Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, the French archipelago off Newfoundland’s Burin Peninsula, in the first official visit by a Canadian prime minister to the territory. The Prime Minister’s Office said in a readout that the leaders “directed their space agencies, defence ministries, and industries to develop and share common space infrastructure, such as launch systems and ground reception and control infrastructure,” and pointed to “significant potential for collaboration among the industries of Canada, France, and the EU.”
The Prime Minister’s Office later clarified what was meant by “ground-based reception facilities,” meaning ground stations. There was no timeline or funding were attached to the directive.
Macron, in his own remarks, welcomed the contract signed Friday between Aldoria and Public Services and Procurement Canada for the supply of space surveillance data to Canada’s military space division — a reference, in context, to 3 Canadian Space Division, responsible for space domain awareness. Aldoria, based in Toulouse and Paris, builds optical ground stations to track objects in orbit and already operates one station in Canada.
An existing security pact
The Aldoria contract follows a security framework Canada and France put in place three months ago. On June 12, the two countries signed a General Security of Information Agreement, letting them exchange classified information on a legally binding basis. The agreement names aerospace and space systems among the sectors it covers and, according to the government’s announcement, “lays the groundwork for deeper cooperation in defence, space, intelligence, and advanced technology.”
Joël Lightbound, minister of government transformation, public works and procurement, said at the time the agreement would make Canada safer by improving how sensitive information is protected and strengthening military cooperation with one of Canada’s closest allies. Stephen Fuhr, secretary of state for defence procurement, said it would help the two countries’ militaries work more closely together. It was Canada’s sixth such agreement, after ones with Ukraine, Poland, Portugal, Spain and, a month earlier, the European Space Agency.
Existing defence ties
Canada and France already cooperate on space defence through the Combined Space Operations initiative, a 10-nation forum whose members share information on threats to satellites and orbital debris. France joined in February 2020, at a meeting hosted in Ottawa; the group’s most recent meeting, in December, was held in Toulouse at France’s newly opened Space Command headquarters, with Canada represented by Royal Canadian Air Force commander Lt.-Gen. Jamie Speiser-Blanchet. Canada has also sent personnel to AsterX, France’s annual military space exercise, taking part in the 2025 edition alongside 11 other allied nations.
That cooperation has stopped short of joint hardware. Mike Wigston, then chief of the U.K.’s Royal Air Force, told SpaceNews in 2023 that Combined Space Operations members “have not yet found an effective way to collaborate on equipment programs” — the initiative has functioned mainly as a forum for sharing information, not building things together. Sunday’s directive to “develop and share” infrastructure would, if it goes forward, be a step past what the multinational framework has delivered so far.
Over a decade of civil cooperation
On the civil side, the Canadian Space Agency and its French counterpart, the Centre national d’études spatiales (CNES), have worked together for more than a decade, including a 2014 agreement on Arctic remote sensing, astronaut health and microgravity research, and a joint stratospheric-balloon launch base in Timmins, that the two agencies have kept renewing since 2012.
French industry already has a small foothold in Canadian space hardware. Thales Alenia Space, the satellite maker jointly owned by Thales and Italy’s Leonardo, built the satellite bus platform for Canada’s RADARSAT-2 Earth-observation satellite, launched in 2007, with MDA Space, as prime contractor. Thales has separately invested in NorthStar Earth and Space, the space intelligence and information company that that tracks objects in orbit.
What isn’t yet clear
The PMO readout does not say what vehicle or program “launch systems” cooperation might involve, or whether it connects to the European Launcher Challenge, the European Space Agency’s own push to fund commercial rocket companies — one of which, Germany’s Isar Aerospace, is already working with Maritime Launch Services on for Spaceport Nova Scotia. Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon already hosts a European ground station, built for the EU’s EGNOS (European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service) satellite-navigation system, though it isn’t clear whether Sunday’s announcement builds on it.
The two countries also announced, separately, a new Canada-France Polar Research Forum, to be held alternately in each country, with its first edition in Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, and an expanded mandate for the regional commission that has linked Atlantic Canada and the archipelago since 1996.
“We’re deepening our partnership in the space sector,” Carney said, in French, at the joint press conference. For now, that deepening rests on the recent security agreement, a defence forum, and a newly signed contract for a French company to track objects in orbit for Canada.