More than $6 million in federal funding is coming to Alberta to support Canada’s Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS), including millions for maritime defence monitoring technology and $3 million to establish a new commercialization and integration centre at the University of Alberta (U of A).
The funding will help position Canadian firms to compete in a rapidly expanding global defence market.
Speaking at the headquarters of Edmonton space-data company Wyvern, Eleanor Olszewski, the minister responsible for Prairies Economic Development Canada (PrairiesCan), announced more than $6.1 million in funding through the Regional Defence Investment Initiative, a $379 million program supporting dual-use technology to strengthen Canada’s defence industrial base.
“We’re making significant investments to strengthen Canada’s defence capabilities,” Olszewski said of the DIS. “It’s really going to help guide investments in Canada’s defence industry … [and also] positioning Canadian firms to compete in a rapidly expanding global defence market.”
Launched in February, the DIS is a $6.6-billion initiative from the Government of Canada to overhaul Canadian military procurement supply chains under a “build, partner, buy” framework that prioritizes domestic production and development. Under the strategy, the Canadian tech sector has seen increased and accelerated investment in innovation, research and development, with a particular focus on sovereign technology and dual-use tech that offers military and civilian applications.
The latest federal investment in Alberta will be split between three recipients: Wyvern, the U of A, and the Council for the Advancement of Native Development Officers (CANDO).
Wyvern is receiving a repayable fund of just over $2.9 million to enhance its satellite technology to improve ship identification and maritime monitoring in defence applications. Wyvern CEO and co-founder Christopher Robson told BetaKit that the company’s hyperspectral imaging is able to provide a degree of maritime monitoring that traditional satellite imaging can’t, aiding in applications like tracking sanctions evasion or monitoring criminal activity on the ocean.
“If you’re looking at a ship from space, you’re looking at it from very far away; you can’t read the name off the hull. They can shut off their automatic identification system,” Robson said. “What we’ve discovered is that every ship has its own unique spectral signature—like a fingerprint—you can associate that unique fingerprint with individual ships. By doing that, we can actually identify a ship from space regardless of whether they have an automatic identification system on or whether they’ve done something else to avoid detection.”
Meanwhile, the U of A is receiving $3 million to establish “a secure defence commercialization and integration centre” called the Dual-use Ecosystem for Future Engineering, National Defence, and Sovereignty (DEFENDS). The intent behind DEFENDS is to establish a Prairies-based capacity for businesses to design, test, and qualify defence and dual-use technologies, with DEFENDS acting as a hub to support military readiness.
“It will help bridge a critical gap moving innovation from research to real-world deployment, ensuring Canadian ideas are developed and validated at scale,” president and vice-chancellor for the U of A, Bill Flanagan, said.
Unique among the recipients is CANDO, which is receiving $149,850 to develop and deliver an Indigenous defence supply chain pilot program. The program seeks to empower Indigenous communities, businesses, and organizations to participate in Canada’s defence and security supply chains.
“What we do is we take 30 Indigenous suppliers, and we put them through the supply chain bootcamp, we go over all the facets that they need to know…so that when we take them to CANSEC, the largest security and defence trade show, they are prepared,” said Raymond Wanuch, the executive director of CANDO.
The money will aid in diversifying revenue streams and expanding the markets of CANDO participants to meet the needs of defence procurement, according to a press release.
Today’s funding announcement comes on the heels of several other announcements made in recent weeks, including funding for Edmonton’s Zero Point Cryogenics and Logican Technologies, also delivered through the RDII last month.
Those investments, alongside this $6.1 million, contributed to Canada’s recent announcement that it has met the two percent of GDP defence spending level mandated by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Defence Investment Pledge.
BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.
Feature image courtesy Jesse Cole for BetaKit.