Ottawa, ON – To prepare for this article, I did a quick scan of headlines about Canada’s North to see what was in the news on Nov. 19, aside from the discussions at Space Canada’s SpaceBound conference that day (from which this article arises.) It struck me that two of the articles on Google’s News page focused on the arrival of polar night. In other words, an annual phenomenon was exotic enough to the AI “algorithm” to make the news.
To me, that was a small reminder that as much as many Canadians consider themselves of the north, we’re really of the south: in areas of reliable communications, able to jump onto a highway to hop cities with relative ease, with easy access to community services like groceries. The far north requires a more rugged ability to think, and the folks up there could remind us “southerners” of obvious facts: we are not living in tune with our environment, let alone the seasons, and every living thing around us is facing the consequences.
So how do we operate up there? Aside from listening carefully to the communities, we received some recommendations from several entities making their business up there. The panellists were:
- Michael Adamson, Senior Director of Defence Strategy and Business Development
- Jessica M. Shadian, CEO and President, Arctic360
- Jason Trembley, Vice President, Commercialization, Terrestar Solutions
- Chris Pogue, President of Defence & Space, Calian Group
- Gill Fortin, Director, Viasat Inc.
- Moderator: Emeline Bardoux, Senior Director, Safran
As a group, the panel identified several areas of attention in the Arctic:
Infrastructure will cost tens of billions of dollars: While defence is an easy (or easier) sell in the Arctic these days, there will be a requirement for social and economic infrastructure to support it – and more largely, to keep the communities stable during climate change. Possible areas of dual-use tech with relevance to space include health care, energy and communications – but as always, there is the question of how to attract investments at scale. Calian pointed out that even the military, as used as it is to working in remote and hostile environments, is going to need more infrastructure than is there now – items like data centres and power. There are even discussions about putting fibre cables by land in the Arctic, as the tech has evolved enough to make it possible to monitor its health – and to deal with the extreme cold. That said, Arctic360 pointed out that one of the big challenges is even knowing what infrastructure is there so that replacements and updates can be undertaken, which is why the company is building a map of these assets at the moment.
Don’t forget about the water: We often forget that our planet as a whole is mostly made of water, and even a glance at the map in Canada’s North shows that water infrastructure is crucial alongside land infrastructure. 3D printing and robotics could be areas that are helpful for custom, affordable solutions in this highly pressurized environment. Moreover, panellists emphasized not working in silos would be ideal, presumably so that vehicles and humans in both environments can continue communicating and receiving the information they need for safe operation.
As the North melts, foreign actors are moving in: Climate change and technologies optimized for rugged situations are giving China and Russia ample opportunity to move into the north, as Canadian Security Intelligence Service director Dan Rogers warned last week (a warning picked up by media as far away as Europe.) The ability to move goods and ships through the Arctic Ocean year-round is a clear military and economic opportunity, and reliable surveillance will be crucial to make sure other countries don’t begin to make sovereign claims based on presence.
Bilateral and local opportunities also abound: Terrestar in particular said there are countries, already in the north or working in the north, who may be interested in partnering on some of the big projects. The UK Space Agency was one example cited, but there are many members of ESA that would qualify. Australia, already a partner on over-the-horizon radar, is another country where expansion of business opportunities might be had. Naturally, the Indigenous communities in the North are also large resources of traditional and technical knowledge that must be partners in any process, because they would know what tech is beneficial for their communities and what jobs would be helpful for their working-age individuals – all while respecting the environment.
Get the comms out quickly: We heard on the panel that good communications (by mobile, at the least) is a critical human right to participate in communities – just as critical as shelter, water and the like. Perhaps the sovereign argument would work here to attract investment, as it did when forming Telesat in the 1960s; in the absence of infrastructure, foreign players (namely, SpaceX Starlink and soon, Amazon Kuiper) will move in and this will make the area susceptible to U.S policies for carrying signals. And as history has shown us time and again, proper infrastructure – while not an exciting discussion – is required to help communities grow and thrive. That said, there’s good news: Telesat Lightspeed, the company emphasized, will be ready to launch next year for government and military customers working in that area, which is a timeline the company has been keeping to for several quarters in a row.