Your phone’s map, your debit card payment and the 911 dispatcher who sends an ambulance all depend on the same thing: a signal from American military satellites. Ottawa now says Canada needs a backup. 

Industry Minister Mélanie Joly released Canada’s first Positioning, Navigation and Timing Resilience Framework on Thursday, a plan to reduce the country’s reliance on global positioning system (GPS), the U.S. system that most Canadians use everyday. 

The framework aims to “diversify” the country’s sources of positioning and timing signals, build Canadian capability for both civilian and military use and encourage investments in the industry.

It sets priorities rather than rules, and comes without new funding or requirements. 

This comes two days after Ottawa poured $15 million through the Strategic Response Fund into Xona Space System, a company building a network of satellites to back up GPS. 

The money will go toward Xona’s $64.8-million project to build a mission operations and satellite manufacturing centre in Montreal, which will support the long-term deployment and operation of Pulsar, the company’s navigation satellite network.

“This is an area that does have vulnerabilities, and that we do need to bolster our capabilities and recognize how we make things more resilient,” Tyler Reid, co-founder and CTO of Xona, said in an interview with iPolitics.

A Cold War system

GPS, first built by the U.S. military during the Cold War and designed in the 1970s, was originally pitched for about 30,000 users, Reid said. 

“That number is seven billion today, so it’s 99.9 per cent of civilians use GPS,” he said. 

Today, GPS is run by the U.S. Space Force. Other powers have built their own systems, recognizing what REid called their “strategic importance.” Currently, Europe has Galileo, China has BeiDou and Russia has GLONASS. 

Beyond maps, GPS timing signals keep cell networks, banking systems and financial transactions in sync, Reid said. 

Reid added that the risk isn’t just hypothetical. 

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, GPS signals have been jammed regularly across Eastern Europe.

“That is a fragile system, it is something that we are very dependent on our modern technology, and if we don’t have access to it, then what happens?” Reid said. 

Waiting for buyers

For now, Ottawa is leaning into the private sector. Rather than building its own system, the framework focuses on creating “the right conditions” for Canadian companies developing PNT technology.

Reid explained that these government signals matter to companies like Xona. He said every startup faces three questions: can you build it, will regulators let you, and will anyone buy it. 

“It’s a chicken and the egg. So you want to have something in space. Once it’s there, lots of people will buy it, but until then, having early commitments is a big deal,” Reid said. 

Just this week, Xona launched six Pulsar satellites. The company says the next step is for Ottawa to become a customer. 

“Translating the PNT strategy… into the commercial contractual options with Canadian private industry in order to deliver the service… would be the next step,” said Angelina Ermakov, Xona Director and External Affairs and Corporate Governance.