Senator is high on satellite’s benefits

Yukon Senator Dan Lang wants a proposed $500-million radar satellite on the radar of the territorial government and local businesses.

Yukon Senator Dan Lang wants a proposed $500-million radar satellite on the radar of the territorial government and local businesses.

And that’s exactly what he tried to do during a noon address Wednesday to chambers of commerce from across the North which gathered for a meeting in Whitehorse this week.

The occasion dovetailed with the Whitehorse Chamber of Commerce’s annual general meeting.

As Lang spoke of the proposed satellite radar, he praised that and other announcements made last week when Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited the territories.

He argued that this particular plan seemed largely ignored when Harper brought it forward.

“A major announcement that I feel was not given the attention that it deserved was the support for the next phase of the RADARSAT Constellation Mission, a system of three advanced remote sensing space satellite designed and built in Canada for the Canada Space Agency,” the Conservative senator said.

Costing just under $500 million, Lang argued the project will provide information that’s greatly needed “for the development and use of our northern natural resources, enhance the monitoring of our weather, help enforcement of our environmental regulations and secure the safety of navigation in our Arctic coastal waters.”

The senator went on to note the benefits that will come from a national defence point of view in allowing officials to know when foreign planes infringe on northern Canadian airspace or when ships enter and/or pollute Canada’s Arctic waters as it will sense the smallest changes.

That will also mean an opportunity to better monitor climate change and how it is impacting permafrost, glaciers and rivers.

“This new satellite system, which is planned to be launched by 2015, will provide Canada and the North with a new ‘highway of information’ which help create the foundation for new businesses and new jobs for our people,” Lang said.

In an interview following his speech, the former territorial Conservative cabinet minister stressed that by knowing as much as possible about the plans for the satellite radar system, the Yukon government and the business community can prepare to take full advantage of the benefits it can bring to the territory.

It could, for example, help direct the creation of new businesses and new jobs that would go with that, further benefitting the territory’s economy, he said.

In the hopes of giving Yukoners an even better idea of how the satellite will impact the territory, Lang said he will be extending an invite for the CEO of the Canadian Space Agency to come to Whitehorse and discuss the plans, hopefully later in the fall.

While the new radar satellite will provide a view of the North from the sky, Lang also pointed to the continued and expanded monitoring that will happen on the ground level through the Canadian Rangers.

“With the expansion of the Rangers, we will have the best of all worlds as we exercise our day-to-day responsibilities in the North,” he said as he continued to point to the changes that are coming with the federal focus on the region.

“Ladies and gentleman, we are witnessing a sea of change in the federal government’s approach to the North. New opportunities await us,” he told delegates.

The proposed Arctic research station in Cambridge Bay could employ staff from throughout the North, he suggested.

“This latest example of funding for research in the North again gives our young people something to strive for,” Lang said.

“Good, high-paying professional jobs in our part of the world that will help the North diversify our economy.”

The federal commitment to education, science and technology, along with competitive tax rates, means new opportunities, he stressed.

“Regionally, we need to continue to ensure our tax regimes are internationally competitive, we need to continually modernize our communication systems and we have to provide our investment community with a well-balanced environmental assessment process that is reasonable and provide decisions in a timely manner so that we can attract investments to our shore and provide our people with good-paying jobs,” Lang said.

“With many of our northern land claims resolved, we are in a position to take full advantage of the world’s interests in our resources which will benefit our First Nations people as well as all northerners.”

The focus on the North seems to have created a sense of optimism throughout the territory that Lang hasn’t seen for decades, he said.

Meetings of the northern chambers wrapped up Wednesday with a closing evening reception.