Ottawa Citizen - November 26, 2012
By Colin Kenny
August 25, 2010 looked like it was going to be a very special day in the history of Canada’s North – as well as the history of Canadian sovereignty and security.
That day, on one of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s summer trips to the Arctic, he announced that Canada would invest in three state-of-the-art, Canadian-made surveillance satellites. These satellites would bolster Canadian sovereignty and security dramatically in the North, but, even more importantly, on Canada’s East and West coasts.
The prime minister underlined the need for the new satellites, calling them “essential tools in affirming Canadian sovereignty in our Arctic.”
Yet, when budget 2012 was released on March 29, it was revealed that the necessary funding had not been allocated for the construction of the satellites to proceed. The project ground to a halt, the company was left in limbo, and many employees faced imminent lay-off.
While Mr. Harper focused on the North, security analysts immediately recognized that the satellites’ prime value would be on southern shores. That is where any hostile forces would target Canada’s populous areas, where maritime activity is heavy and it is extremely difficult to separate innocuous vessels from those that are potentially a threat.
The company which was responsible for designing and building the three new satellites was the Canadian firm of MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates. They had been the manufacturers of Canada’s two highly successful Radarsats already aloft. The three upgrades were to be known as the Constellation series and would combine with their predecessors to help our surveillance teams develop a real-time picture of what is approaching our coasts. This would eliminate some of the hit-and-miss problems currently making intelligence-gathering difficult at our Marine Security Operation Centres (MSOC) called Trinity in Halifax and Athena in Esquimalt where data fusion takes place.
Our Maritime Forces are responsible for coastal surveillance and patrol, which includes detecting and removing mines off our coasts. But there is currently no real-time picture of what is out there in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The two Radarsat satellites are helpful, but our coastal surveillance is still patchwork. Our primary surveillance mechanism remains aged Aurora aircraft, which are expensive to fly and offer incomplete and after-the-fact intelligence.
It is inconceivable that Canada cannot manage to put together a clear matrix of real-time intelligence on its East and West coasts. We need greater satellite coverage, and we need drones that can hover over anomalies that pose a threat to our security. Right now Canada is a ripe target for the illegal trafficking of humans and goods. Any hostile force that wants to plant mines has a pretty good chance of succeeding, despite the best efforts of the multidisciplinary teams that staff our MSOCs.
The two Radarsats already up there – Radarsat-1, launched in 1995, and Radarsat-2, launched in 2007 – are not capable of providing adequate coverage of Canada’s three coasts on their own. But adding the three new Constellations would dramatically improve coverage. The ability of both the Radarsats and the more advanced Constellations to identify small and potentially dangerous anomalies is breathtaking – the envy of our allies, who despite their best efforts have fallen short of developing anything as effective. MacDonald Dettwiler notes that the U.S. government spent something in the neighbourhood of $1 billion trying, before giving up and obtaining intelligence from Canada.
From 800 kilometres up - day or night, clear or cloudy - both the Radarsats and Constellations are able to detect forest fires, monitor ocean currents or underground gas and oil pipelines (indicating when a spill is likely or has taken place), and can identify sinking subway lines, the thickness of ice, suspicious containers, underground tunnels illegally built between Canada and US, and even in some cases the wake created by submarines. On the East and West Coasts, they would be able to track vessels of all sizes – revisiting locations every 70 minutes in a path 200km wide (for each satellite) and transmit the information in near real time.
Satellite coverage is going to be essential in the Arctic where sea ice is quickly disappearing, the Northwest Passage is opening, and the arrival of many more foreign cargo ships is inevitable. The ability to detect and track ships is a necessary predecessor to boarding an illegal or hostile vessel.
Mr. Harper knew all this more than two years ago when he made his Arctic announcement. Since then MacDonald Dettwiler has on more than one occasion publicly complained that the project has been stalled, and that key workers have been lost or had to be reassigned.
The next date in this saga is Dec. 13, 2012.That is the date, quickly coming upon us, that the federal Treasury Board is scheduled to meet and decide whether the Constellation project should go ahead. The cost of the project, originally estimated at $600 million, has (predictably) risen nearly 50%. MacDonald Dettwiler has been suggesting that the project is teetering on the edge of doom, a victim of the government’s current austerity program.
Word has it that Environment Canada and Industry Canada have been slow providing their input and further delays will result in more private sector layoffs. They may have their reasons, but if this project goes down the tubes, it will be bad news for Canadians
As Mr. Harper wisely observed: “By supporting the world-class RADARSAT Constellation Mission, our government will ensure Canada maintains its role as a world leader in aerospace technology. This cutting-edge project will create highly-skilled jobs, and attract the world’s best scientists, technicians and engineers to Canada’s world-renowned space industry.”
At stake in this venture are more than a thousand jobs, most of them requiring highly educated personnel. MacDonald Dettwiler, of Vancouver, has about 700 people on the project alone. COMDEV, in Cambridge, On., would supply key elements of the radar payload, Bristol (Magellan) from Winnipeg would build the main space craft structure and MDA Montreal would build and integrate the radar system. There are also a number of smaller suppliers involved across the country and all of these communities would be hurt if this project doesn’t go forward.
Quality jobs would not be the only bonus involved in seeing this project go ahead. At the moment Canada gets a lot more intelligence from “Five Eyes”, our intelligence allies – the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand – than we contribute to them. Providing better satellite coverage of the western hemisphere would help right that balance, as the satellites scan north-south, from the Arctic to the Antarctic.
MDA says that the United States is interested in purchasing as many as six Constellations if the project goes ahead. More great jobs for Canadians were that to happen.
Yet despite this and all the other aforementioned benefits to Canada, we find ourselves today inching ever closer to the point of no-return. MDA and its subcontractors have done well to contain the job losses and keep the project alive while it waits for further funding, but mark my words: if December 13th comes and goes and no money is allocated, Canada will be the poorer.
Here’s hoping it doesn’t come to that.
(Colin Kenny is former Chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. kennyco@sen.parl.gc.ca)