Good morning, everyone.

My name is Michael Byers. I have held the Canada research chair in global politics and international law for two decades now. I co-direct the Outer Space Institute, which is a global network of experts working on cutting edge challenges in near-earth space.

Also of great relevance to this committee, I co-direct the MINDS space security network, which is a DND-funded network, through their academic network funding. It deals with cutting-edge issues concerning space security as it relates to Canada and Canada's national defence. I'm delighted to be here on this specific topic. It's exactly what I am working on right now.

I have two simple points, which I will elaborate on briefly. The first is that satellites will always be much easier to attack than to defend. They are acutely vulnerable. Second, Canada has several space companies that have satellite systems in orbit right now that are being used to support the Ukrainian military in an armed conflict with Russia. Nothing I'm telling you is secret. It's all public domain information. These are things you need to know.

In November of 2021, Russia destroyed a defunct Soviet-era satellite at 483 kilometres above earth to demonstrate its ability to use ground-based missiles against satellites. It created a lot of debris. It put both astronauts and cosmonauts on the International Space Station at some risk of collisions with debris, but Russia demonstrated its ability to do that.

Russia has been jamming satellite transmissions extensively for the last two years across eastern Europe, from Ukraine all the way up to the northern border between Norway and Russia. On the morning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Viasat, a U.S. company that was providing communications support to the Ukrainian military, suffered a massive cyber-attack. It went dark on the morning of the invasion. I could go on.

Even complex systems involving thousands of satellites, like SpaceX's Starlink, are vulnerable to all those system attacks, including a Cold War weapon called the [Technical difficulty—Editor] November 2021 test right in the middle of the constellation would cause SpaceX to have to engage in tens of thousands of collision-avoidance manoeuvres, thus rendering the system dysfunctional.

Satellites are not something we can actually defend, which is why things like space diplomacy are so incredibly important to remind Russia, to remind China, that we all are acutely vulnerable to things like debris in space and that irresponsible behaviour hurts everyone.

The second point—and this again is public record—is that we know that shortly after the Russian full-scale intervention, the CEO of MDA Space, Canada's largest space company, issued a press release saying that MDA was providing synthetic aperture radar imagery to support the Ukrainian military, incredibly useful imagery. It can produce high-resolution images at night through clouds and track Russian tank movements at night. That's fine. It's been a really important part of Canada's contribution to the Ukrainian effort.

Telesat operates communication satellites from geosynchronous orbit. It was revealed by the then defence minister that Telesat had a contract from the Canadian government to provide communications support to the Ukrainian military. One can presume that's ongoing.

As Dr. Steer said, this is quite normal. Lots of satellites are dual use. Lots of governments contract with commercial operators. The challenge is that, by engaging in this kind of support, arguably these Canadian companies are making their satellites legitimate targets under the laws of war and, therefore, potentially implicating Canada in a role in the conflict that we might not want. We've been working really hard to avoid any direct conflict with Russia. We've been working really hard to avoid triggering article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. These satellites bring us very close to the line of actually being directly engaged in that conflict.

I would encourage members of this committee to think about how Canada should respond if, for instance, RADARSAT-2, the principal satellite used by MDA to support the Ukrainian military, was in fact shot down by a Russian missile. What would that mean for Canada's involvement in the conflict? How would we respond?

The next time we get into a situation like this, what kind of considerations would we want to make when deciding whether to allow a Canadian company to engage in this kind of role? It all happened very quickly in February and March of 2022. I'm not saying the wrong decisions were made, but we found ourselves much more involved in the conflict than I think decision-makers realized at the time. These are new issues and new areas, but satellites bring us very close to the front line in terms of providing support for things like targeting in conflicts that we're otherwise trying to stay out of.

With those two points—that we can't really defend satellites and that some of these satellites, in the way they are used, are bringing us into foreign armed conflicts—I'll leave it there and wait for questions from the members.

Thank you very much.