Thank you for the opportunity to appear before this committee. I am Ewan Reid, founder and CEO of Mission Control and a member of the board of directors of Space Canada.

Mission Control is 100% Canadian owned. It is a 10-year-old start-up, headquartered here in Ottawa, that develops advanced technology for space missions. In particular, our solutions are used for operating robotics and advanced payloads in space and AI in space. Our technology will be used to operate three lunar rover missions upcoming in the next 12 months alone, with customers across three continents. To our knowledge, we are the only Canadian-owned company to contribute hardware for a lunar rover mission. We were also the first organization in the world to send deep learning AI to the moon.

Beyond rovers and exploration, our AI technology is also applicable for earth observation and space domain awareness applications. Last year, we uploaded a deep-learning AI algorithm to a European space agency earth observation satellite. Most recently, we’ve just announced Canada’s next giant leap for AI in space, a mission we’ve dubbed “Persistence”. Enabled by a financial contribution from the Canadian Space Agency, the Persistence mission will demonstrate the power of robust and resilient AI for in-orbit processing to preserve bandwidth, enable rapid decision-making and improve our knowledge of earth. This is a huge paradigm shift.

AI has been used for years to process the massive amounts of data that are generated in space, but this has been done here on the ground. Operators spend millions every year to downlink all that data through a ground station, and then intelligent processing is used to produce actionable insights. With Persistence, we want to move that intelligence to the edge, deploying the AI on the spacecraft itself to downlink insights rather than raw data. Not only will this save space operators millions of dollars every year; it will save time that is so critical in defence and security applications. In fact, it even enables using spacecraft in ways that wouldn’t be possible without intelligence on board, things like operating spacecraft in close proximity to other spacecraft. Many of these use cases are highly relevant to space defence and are capabilities that Canadian adversaries are working on.

Before we can usher in this new era of AI in space, we need to demonstrate that it will work. This is why the Persistence mission is so important. By conducting a year-long demonstration in orbit, we can prove that AI can be a resilient, trustworthy tool and be positioned to license our platform to capture a share of what is predicted to be a trillion-dollar industry in the coming decades. This market opportunity is key for us. However, to tackle it, we’re competing with well-funded, international companies that are moving fast and, most critically, are working closely with their governments.

While we’ve benefited from significant R and D funding from the Canadian government and have been supported by organizations and programs like NRC IRAP, EDC, BDC and others, Canada remains a challenging environment for companies trying to compete internationally. Canadian firms like mine need more than moderate and intermittent R and D funding. We need the certainty of a long-term plan from and partnership with the government. We need to be able to move from R and D and demonstrations to selling our technology and services to government.

Around the world, leading space nations work hand in glove with their domestic industries. Whether in China or the U.S.A., foreign nations are anchor customers for their space industries, procuring services in ways that companies want to sell them, enabling the industry to be more competitive and to raise capital. Innovation in space, robotics and AI is moving rapidly. Canada and Canadian firms need a way to leverage innovation quickly so the domestic industry can provide for the needs of Canadians in a modern and evolving world, a world with increasing geopolitical tensions, climate change and this rapid technological advancement, particularly in the space domain.

The availability of private investment in Canada is far smaller than in the United States. If Canadian firms could sell more reliably, quickly and efficiently into the government, it would allow the space industrial base to raise capital, continue to advance, demonstrate and commercialize key technologies, and compete internationally. Beyond competing internationally, empowering the domestic industrial base ensures sovereignty over space capabilities. Canada must have the ability to support the full life cycle of space programs, from design and build to launch and operations. Without this, the Canadian Armed Forces and Canadian citizens will be beholden to foreign nations for critical infrastructure that underpins everything from communications and Arctic sovereignty to forest fire monitoring and fisheries.

Canadian firms have been leaders in AI, in space and in robotics, but we are at risk of falling behind without a way to sell these capabilities to the Canadian government at the speed of innovation.

Those close my remarks.