When Canada’s Industry Minister, Jim Prentice, blocked the planned sale of the space unit of MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA), the buyer, Alliant Techsystems (ATK), had 30 days to respond to the decision, a period that is coming to an end this week. The Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail reported late last week that the deal was on “life support” after a parliamentary committee issued a report supporting Prentice’s decision to block the $1.3-billion sale. ATK has been in discussions with the Canadian government to try and salvage the deal, perhaps by divesting RADARSAT-2, the radar imaging satellite owned by MDA.
The planned sale is so contentious that MDA’s founders, no longer working for the company, are split. The article above includes comments from Vern Dettwiler, the D in MDA, hoping that the sale does not go through. “When I was still working, I and most of my fellow workers, believed quite strongly that we would not like to work for a defence (or offence) based company, particularly a foreign company. This appears to be the possible outcome for MDA’s space technology division.” However, in an op-ed in the same newspaper on Monday, John S. MacDonald (the M in MDA), argued that the sale was essential to the health of the company because of chronic underfunding of Canadian space efforts. “I fear that the government will be responsible for creating a new Avro Arrow disaster, unless it either reverses the decision or rapidly increases funding for Canada’s space program.” MacDonald said that the Canadian Space Agency’s budget needs to be doubled “immediately” with more increases down the road to maintain Canada’s standing in space.
Now it begins. Following the knee-jerk reaction that led to Canada’s blocking of the MDA sale it was inevitable that the cries for more funding from the CSA would soon arise. Anyone with half a brain knows that Canada is a small time player in the space applications industry. What we do, we do very well, but we are just not big enough or rich enough to support a full fledged space exploration industry. Now, because of the howls from the super nationalists, we are in danger of losing our best vehicle for inclusion into the big players club. That is unless we come up with huge sums of government cash to fund make work projects that the major space faring nations won’t buy. Our contracts with NASA are long gone and we are left with nothing but a dwindling handful of small time Canadian projects and the loss of expertise. Well done, all you super sovereignists. Let the lawsuits begin.
One of CSA’s problems is the space agency and investment is tied to U.S. space interests whether public or private. If space interest by the U.S. public is on the wane both NASA and CSA suffer for funding, CSA more so . So rather than see Canadian high tech leave the N.Am technology orbit it’s bought by ATK. Ottawa’s bluster to buy MDA and double fund CSA is a dream. The Canadian public does not have the stomach for heavy investment in space. Presently high space technology in Canada is not the Ukraine, Australia, Japan or even India.