If Canada wants to get into the ‘club’ of respected space-faring nations, the days of relying on other countries to launch all of our spacecraft must end.
That was the message delivered by Glenn Cowan, Founder and Managing Partner of the ONE9 venture capital fund, during the inaugural Canadian Space Launch Conference (CSLC) on April 29, 2025.
Organized by NordSpace, the Canadian space company building its own orbital launch vehicle (Tundra), commercial spaceport (Spaceport Canada), and space systems/satellite division, the CSLC brought together the space industry, government, academia, not-for-profit and others at the Canada Aviation & Space Museum in Ottawa.
“In my former community, I was a special operations officer and we had capabilities that gave us access to certain clubs,” said Cowan during the CSLC panel discussion, ‘How Domestic Access to Space Will Redefine Canadian Defence, Security and Sovereignty’. In the same vein, for Canada to be taken seriously by its allies and gain admittance to their top-level military activities and projects, Ottawa has to invest substantially in key defence areas — or face the consequences.
“Special operations and intelligence capabilities, submarines and space are three really large strategic areas where our allies want us to participate,” Cowan explained to the packed CSLC audience hall. “[But] historically, Canada has been a nation that takes a lot and doesn’t give back. If we want to have access to that club, the price is going to be the investment that we need to make into these capabilities. The cost is not doing it is being denied access to that specific club.”
The time for Canada to step up is now, he added. “Like it or not, the Americans and our NATO allies have held Canada’s feet to the fire and said, you guys haven’t been paying your price and the cost you’re going to pay is access,” said Cowan. On the positive side, establishing domestic launch capabilities in Canada will help address our allies’ concerns about us paying our way in defence. “These types of capabilities give us not only the ability to have our own sovereign capability and everything that goes along with it, but it gives us agency over our own decisions,” he said. “It gives us leverage to increase our position amongst our allies, and for me the most important aspect is it gives us access to a really important club.”
Cowan’s ‘club’ analogy was echoed and expanded upon by David Beck, Branch Chief of Space Access Mobility and Logistics with the United States Space Force. “Most people, when they want to go into a club, they don’t ask for permission to walk in the door — they make themselves known,” Beck said. “I do appreciate everything the Canadian Space Agency has done to support our missions. No doubt about it. At the same time, when you grow up and become who you want to be, you have to step on your own, do your own thing.”
The bottom line: For Canada to be taken seriously in space in the 21st century, we need sovereign launch capability — and we need to achieve it as soon as safely possible.
