It’s time for Canada to get serious about protecting its Arctic sovereignty using space-based assets. That was the takeaway from the talk delivered by Dan Kerry, Deloitte Canada’s Director and Space Lead, as he discussed his co-authorship of a paper entitled, ‘Reaching North: Achieving Canadian Arctic Sovereignty Through Space’. Kerry was speaking at Space Canada Horizons, the annual space industry conference hosted by Space Canada. It was held June 4, 2025 at Ottawa’s Bayview Yards.
“This is a call to arms for Canada to step up and use space and space technology to not only protect the Arctic for the benefit of all Canadians, but also to generate jobs and hit 2% (level of GDP defence expenditures as required by NATO),” Kerry told the well-attended conference. “When you look at the Arctic from above, it becomes apparent how potentially vulnerable the Arctic is going to become. With the ice melting, the Northwest Passage and other routes will become available. The presence of Russians on the east hand side of that picture will be militarizing everything. You also have the Chinese to the East who are going to be looking there. [As well] You have our evolving relationship with the Americans to the South — and then we have our European allies.”
With all of these players interested in the polar region, it is important to Canadians “to make sure that the Arctic is sovereignty protected for the benefit of all of us,” said Kerry.
So how can Canada protect its Arctic sovereignty by using space-based assets? It starts by strengthening what Dan Kerry called the “space value chain” — namely the academics, designers, and researchers who are at the start of the space development chain, following through the actual manufacturing, launching, and operations of space-based assets. At the same time, “space is becoming incredibly utilized and the ability to clean up after ourselves is going to be important for the generations,” he cautioned.
Next, Canada needs to do a better job of supporting “critical enablers,” said Kerry. “The critical enablers are people in this room, those space companies that are investing in design, build, launch, and operations. It is the government agencies that are funding the research that are enabling us to keep safe. But it’s also the indigenous communities that live in the Arctic who understand the Arctic more than most, and our ability to bring them on this journey. And then there’s funders. We’ve talked about government funding towards the 2% (level of GDP defence expenditures as required by NATO). It’s the ability to bring in financial services to invest in space ecosystems, after they understand the value and the benefits that space can bring.”
Kerry briefly talked about the need to increase the talent pool in the Canadian space industry, “space being that wonderful economic multiplier where there’s high value jobs.” Then he turned to his core message, which was for the federal government to commit seriously to boosting Canada’s space sector as a whole. “We need a whole-of-government approach, which would be sovereignty of the Arctic, the ability to invest into buy Canadian, to stimulate the economy, to encourage jobs, and to grow and create that sovereignty where we have the control around our ecosystem,” Kerry concluded. “That would secure a domestic supply chain that would create those jobs that we’ve talked about.”
