Transportation
Canada Cuts Bureaucracy, Loans Cash to Bolster Its Space Firms
- Providing $1.5 billion loan to Telesat for Lightspeed network
- Public-private work system was ‘tedious’: 7 Wing commander
Four decades after the US first began to encourage commercial space launch programs, Canada has finally gotten serious about promoting its homegrown space industries.
It launched the Commercial Integration Cell in May and the National Space Council in April after two years of planning. Both are intended to increase collaboration and communication between the government and the private sector, and were inspired by steps the US had taken years earlier. Telesat Corp. Chief Executive Officer Dan Goldberg said in an interview that Canada’s cell is “long overdue.”