Looking ahead: EY has ideas about where Canada’s space industry should go next

A roadmap in development for the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada (AIAC) discusses our country's space capability assessments and goals. The most urgent trends we should be focusing on include space-based Earth observation, space domain awareness, satellite communications, space exploration and space data analytics, according to Mauricio Zelaya, EY Canada partner and national economics leader. EY Canada was involved in formulating the analysis, which is completing its first of a few phases – the final date for the report was not discussed. "The idea here is once we begin mapping out what those capabilities are in Canada, relative to global opportunities, then with the next phase it is to really understand – what is the quantification of that? What is that market size? What does that dollar value look like?" Zelaya asked during a presentation at the virtual AIAC conference Thursday (May 26). He added: "What are the areas if we were to go forward with some of those, and, of course, identify what are those key levers to help support and make those growth opportunities a reality?" EY noted the perennial approach for Canada to rely on others for launch opportunities while working as a global leader in specialized, yet powerful, fields such as robotics and engineering data analytics. Factors that make this work include a "strong, robust labour market; the R&D [research and development] is great and [we have] a lot of international collaboration," Zelaya said. But to keep the industry moving forward, EY is urging a focus on economic conditions, including regulatory frameworks and innovation ecosystem mappings, to best support the Canadian space industry. Applications to Earth services are also helpful – especially in the problem of connectivity that numerous space companies are seeking to address through satellite constellations. "The easiest example to think about" when describing applications, Zelaya said, is how GPS "is not just focusing on just the position navigation, but also timing and synchronization. Different sectors benefit from this in different ways." A broad sector analysis in space shows that Canada does still have established capabilities within areas such as manufacturing integration, space components, software engineers and specialized payloads. But the country is lagging behind in areas such as satellite communication, space Internet and satellite navigation, EY analysis showed. (EY emphasized not to think of the lags as issues, but areas for potential growth as long as focus I put upon them.) Zelaya said the analysis is a "toolset" to " help those stakeholders to really identify what those gaps are in to help make those informed decisions," particularly to target areas where it might be easier to make development timelines a little shorter. One area the sector should continue to keep an eye on is the labour force, Zelaya said, as "what we're finding is that it [industry] is going to be a little bit more conservative in nature." This, however, is a gap that Canadian space industry already knows about as it seeks to keep talent in the country rather than migrating to other sectors like the United States or Europe. While thinking ahead 20 years or so can seem difficult in an environment where investors demand good results by the quarter or by the year, Zelaya said such initiatives will benefit the entire industry. "You think about the researchers, innovators of businesses … that also helps in developing retaining and attracting talent, rescaling talent, or upscaling," he said. While Canada is seen as "an attractive place to do business," the small market and the relatively lower numbers of startups (even if growing) to the United States are things that our industry must continue to find ways to work around, he said. Usually governments, industry and academia approach this issue through collaborating on projects that have strategic funding from government to commercialize newer technologies – an example being the LEAP (Lunar Exploration Accelerator Program) program from the Canadian Space Agency. Zelaya noted we do have strengths that allow industry to pick strategic bets for investing in technologies, including a fairly recent national space plan, stronger government priorities, and access to public funding. He also noted the recognition in Canada that space touches upon other strategic industries like agriculture, which allows the space industry to rope in priorities in other high-priority areas to create an even stronger incentive for investment.