INUVIK
Planet Labs is "seriously reconsidering" its investment in Inuvik after waiting more than a year for Global Affairs Canada to approve its satellite monitoring facility in Inuvik.

Mike Safyan, Planet Labs' director of launch, says the company still has not received approval to monitor its satellites from its Inuvik ground station facility. The company is considering whether to pull its investments out of the region. - photo courtesy of Planet Labs

The company, along with Kongsberg Satellite out of Norway and New North Networks from Inuvik, spent approximately $10 million on antennas at the private ground station off the Dempster Highway.

The facility has been ready to go all year but is being held up because of what Planet is calling an arduous federal regulatory process.

"Global Affairs Canada already failed to give us an answer for our previous launch, which was in February," said Mike Safyan, Planet Labs director of launch, talking about an 88-satellite constellation launch earlier in the year that Planet Labs wanted to monitor from its Inuvik station.

"We had to get back-up ground station support in Antarctica," said Safyan. "We're in a situation where we have the satellites going up into orbit and we need the capacity that the ground station will provide."

The company is launching another 48-satellite constellation in July.

"If we can't get the approval (to monitor the next launch), then we have to look at other places to invest in," said Safyan. "At this stage we are seriously reconsidering our investments in Inuvik, not because we don't want to be there, but because of the way that the federal government of Canada has been treating our investment there and our application process."

Inuvik is well-positioned geographically for monitoring the company's satellites and has the ability to download data quickly thanks to the Mackenzie Valley Fibre Link, which recently came online.

Planet, which has an office in Lethbridge, Alta., identified Inuvik as the next location where it wanted to establish a presence in Canada, but the regulatory problems are throwing a serious wrench into those plans.

Satellite monitoring in Canada has to go through two federal bodies for approval: Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) and Global Affairs Canada. Safyan said the company has had no problem with the former but that the difficulty lies with Global Affairs Canada, adding that the company is still waiting for Global Affairs to finish reviewing its application.

"The antennas have been ready to begin operation since the beginning of this year and we submitted our application to GAC early last year. That's where the holdup currently is," said Safyan.

Safyan said the commercial satellite industry is experiencing something of a renaissance or revolution, with more and more companies popping up with bigger and more ambitious projects.

"Inuvik could be a world-class hub for getting that data down if the regulatory environment there is conducive to that, but if not there are other places folks could go," he said.

One example is northern Norway.

Safyan said the industry tends to follow the trailblazers. Planet installed antennas in New Zealand where there wasn't much infrastructure, and within a couple of years two more companies came in and installed their own antennas.

"That's the kind of activity we expect in Inuvik should the regulatory process become more reasonable," he said.

It would be a shame to see that investment in Inuvik redeployed somewhere else, he said.

"If it turns out that we have to pull out the antennas and relocate them elsewhere, I think the rest of the industry would at least think very closely about making an investment and perhaps might even put a pause on that until they saw some positive reforms from the federal government," said Safyan.

Inuvik Drum has reached out to Global Affairs Canada multiple times for comment and has received no response as of press time.

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