Canada’s largest space company, which happens to be headquartered in Richmond, was inducted into the Richmond Chamber of Commerce’s Hall of Fame at the 41st annual Business Excellence Awards Thursday.
The honour is reserved for businesses that have been operating in the city for at least 25 years. That’s the case for MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates (MDA), a company that designs software and hardware for satellites, space robots as well as military, naval and aerospace communications systems.
“I think it’s a big deal. It’s excellent,” said Toronto-based group president Mike Greenley. “[The Hall of Fame is] a tremendous recognition of [the founders] and their efforts.”
Matt Pitcairn, Chamber president and CEO, said most companies inducted into the Hall of Fame are household names “doing great things … right here in our backyard.”
Known for its role making the Canadarm1 and Canadarm2, MDA was an obvious choice.
“MDA, I mean, they’re on every $5 bill in Canada,” he said.
Founder John S. MacDonald was already a UBC professor when he started the company with Vern Dettwiler in 1969 in Richmond. Greenley said it was a “noble ambition” that’s allowed high-calibre engineers to live out their careers in B.C. Now, the company has nearly 2,000 employees across Canada with more than 600 of them based in the Vancouver and Richmond offices.
Greenley describes MDA as Canada’s largest space company. He said regular Canadians can interact with MDA’s space technology up to 30 times a day when they do things like plug a location into Google Maps or turn on their satellite TV.
“People don’t realize how often they’re interacting with information that benefits them from space.”
Richmond’s role space
Information from RADARSAT-2, a satellite operated out of the Richmond office, also has many applications, like analyzing agricultural crops, looking at polar ice, checking on natural disasters and tracking ships in the ocean.
The Richmond office is also involved in:
- Designing more satellites to be launched in 2019
- The Sapphire project to protect Canadian space equipment
- Delivering military-grade drone services
- Writing software that creates Google Earth images from satellite data
- Writing software for procedures for planes coming in to airports
- Gathering detailed survey data about the topography of land in B.C.
Fighting for the Canadian space industry
Greenley is also fighting to make people aware of how important the space industry is to the Canadian economy. He’s part of a campaign called Don’t Let Go Canada, educating people about Canada’s place in space.
“The biggest thing people don’t understand is how strong the Canadian space industry is,” Greenley said.
According to the president of the Canadian Space Agency, the space sector generated $5.5 billion in revenue in 2016 and employed about 10,000 people in full-time positions.
Another challenge, Greenley added, is getting the Canadian government to publish a new space strategy. The last one expired 15 years ago. Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Navdeep Bains said in May that a new one was coming this year, but it has yet to be revealed.
Greenley also wants Canada to commit to join the U.S.-led Lunar Gateway project, a proposed space station that would orbit the moon. MDA is poised to provide artificial intelligence and robotics for the project, which is planned to launch in 2024.
