Saturday forum
The Prince George Citizen — Saturday, November 15,1986 — 5
Space: Canada's new frontier
            by GREG BARR for Southam News
  OTTAWA — When seven Americans met their deaths aboard the space shuttle Challenger on Jan. 28, a world mourned.
  But the real tragedy surfaced months later, when it was revealed that top brass at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration — caught in a deadly political tug-of-war — knew of the mechanical flaws in the shuttle’s design, but pushed the launch button anyway.
  Nine months later, the Canadian government announced in the Oct. 1 throne speech that it intends to form a centralized space agency to control the country’s efforts to exploit the heavens.
  Whether Conservative or Liberal, space has always been a government priority — recently indicated by the memorandum of understanding signed in 1985 in which the government pledged to “create a secure environment” for industry; and the R&D (research and development) agreement signed with prime contractor Spar Aerospace Ltd. of Toronto.
  In a recent interview, Science Minister Frank Oberle, relieved to take a break from the barrage of criticism surrounding the National Research Council budget cuts controversy, spoke of the space program in possessive, glowing terms, as a parent would describe a favored child. (The $20 million that may be chopped from existing NRC programs is to be diverted into the space program.)
  A space program, Oberle believes, and specifically the initiative to piggyback with the U.S. space-station project, will create jobs and economic prosperity.
  “It is also an incredible inspiration to young people to pursue engineering careers, while our astronaut program has brought an unbelievable response from young Canadians,” said Oberle.
  But it’s been more than two years since Marc Garneau became Canada’s first astronaut aboard a NASA shuttle flight — there’s only so much public relations mileage that can be gleaned from such an ambassador.
  Meanwhile, Ottawa-born astronaut Steve Mac-Lean must sit and wait until at least 1988 before he can nudge the envelope of space, due to this year’s Challenger accident.
  Oberle, who represents Prince George-Peace River, is walking a thin line, balancing what he believes are the wishes of taxpayers against the clamoring of industry and a handful of government departments and agencies all wanting a bigger chunk of the space budget for individual goals.
  Oberle, reluctant to release specific plans for the agency’s creation, said it will be complete in 1987. No name has been chosen though suggestions include National Space Agency, National Space Organization, Canadian Space Agency and Space Canada.
  A proposal to the prime minister could be made as early as December, says Mac Evans, director general of the Science department’s space policy sector, charged with laying out the plans for the agency.
  Four reports issued since January, 1985, by government watchdogs and industry associations state the creation of a space agency would be in the best interests of taxpayers, industry and government. ‘
  The idea, however, dates back to July, 1967.
  That’s when the Science Council of Canada first recommended the creation of a “broadly-con-ceived central agency” to plan the country’s foray into the wild, black yonder.
  Two years later, the Interdepartmental Committee on Space was formed as a forum for the various government departments involved in space, but with no real power to create policy.
  Three government bodies now share the largest responsibility for the civilian space budget, set at $148 million this year: Energy, Mines and Resources, Communications and the National Research Council. The Department of National Defence has a separate internal budget for space programs ($15 million last year) while the Science department takes the management role.
  Under the existing format, each department pushes for more money for individual departmental space projects, which most observers say has divided, rather than united the space effort.
  The Nielsen Task Force on Program Review reported in March that, “The space plan is little
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     While Canadian politicians and public servants may never have to live with the blood of dead astronauts on their hands, they nonetheless face some very tough policy decisions over the shape and mandate of a made-in-Can-ada space agency. And Science Minister Frank Oberle, who represents Prince George-Peace River, is in the centre of it all.
more than a shopping list of ambitious projects and does not embody a strategy of giving priority to those projects yielding the highest economic return.”
Oberle agrees with that assessment, which sounds very similar to recent critiques of NASA.
“While all of the departments deserve a lot of credit for where we are now in our space-related activities, it’s time to better manage and consolidate our efforts,” he said.
Canadian industry, naturally, is in favor of the agency format because it could mean more international contracts, ultimately causing a ripple effect that will create jobs.
“The system we have is confusing for our major international customers. The ad hoc approach hasn’t paid off and we haven’t been able to put across a strong message that we’re a nation that’s in the space business,” says Alec Bishop, vice-president of the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada, the industry’s lobbying group in Ottawa.
John MacDonald, chairman of aerospace firm MacDonald, Dettwiler & Associates Ltd. of Richmond, B.C. says the country’s space effort will, continue to stagnate if a so-called agency is created that is merely a carbon copy of the interdepartmental committee with a fancy name.
“If we don’t organize ourselves and put an end to the constant bureaucratic infighting among the departments, we might as well forget the whole thing and quit wasting our money,” said MacDo-
 nald. “NASA has the disease, and we’re catching it.”
   No “new” money will be needed to create the agency, expected to house about 200 public servants gleaned from various space-related government programs. Though Canada’s space program employs about 500 government workers, only management and administration positions would be transferred to the agency.
   Exactly what the space agency would manage is contained in the list of the new space initiatives unveiled in May in the Science department’s 15-year space plan, which focused on the $800-mil-lion long-term commitment on a space station, to be launched in 1994.
   Of the $824 million to be spent on civilian space projects through 1990-91, the top-three priorities are: $240 million for remote sensing; $219 million on the space station; and $202 million on space communications projects, mainly the development of the mobile two-way radio transmission satellite (MSAT).
   Other funds will continue to flow into existing priorities such as the co-operative relationship with the European Space Agency, the astronaut program, and NRC’s space science division.
   The rub comes when the so-called “new” money for space initiatives announced in May is separated from the money announced in previous space plans.
   About $489 million of the $824 million total was previously allocated, leaving $335 million to be contributed — under a “reallocation” scheme
from other departments — for the new initiatives.
  Oberle would not reveal the list detailing exactly what will be cut from each department to support the $335-million worth of new initiatives, because “it might cause my colleagues at the other departments unnecessary problems.”
  Certainly the proposed $20.5-million cut from the NRC budget for 1987-88 has created a lot of problems for Oberle.
  As more high-profile scientists muster up the courage to come forward with the news that their particular program was axed, opposition members and industry groups are coming down hard on the beleaguered minister for what they say is a Jekyll-and-Hyde approach to science and technology; promising a renewed commitment to science but cutting basic research at the same time.
  Still, Aerospace Industries’ Bishop says Canada hasn’t done badly as a space nation, in spite of the fragmented approach to funding and management.
  Canada’s space program expenditures put the country eighth on the list of space nations — wedged between Italy and Belgium — in terms of dollars spent on space as a percentage of GNP. Canada’s government space budget was $158 million in 1985-86, while NASA’s budget was $7 billion US.
  But at thesame time, Canadian space industry sales are worth afbout $300 million a year, with 70 per cent exported, from an industrial base employing about 3,800 Canadians that is 90-per-cent domestically owned. The space segment represents 10 "t cent of the country’s $3-billion aerospace i:.* v^ry, and has reached a size that according to industry officials would benefit from some sharply-focused government policy.
  On one hand, the federal government’s decision to pump millions of dollars into the NASA space station program in order to live up to that pledge is seen as a positive move for industry — particularly for Spar Aerospace and its subcontractors. Then again, recent international events have provided extra ammunition to those who question the move to jump into orbit with the Americans again.
  Critics point to the costly delays caused by the Challenger space shuttle disaster which set back Canada’s astronaut program, caused project delays at many aerospace firms, and caused problems for Telesat Canada, forced to find alternative satellite launching methods until shuttle flights resume in 1988.
  Some have called for a public review of Canada’s $800-million contribution to build and maintain the mobile service centre segment of the $12-billion space station project. They question the government’s estimates that $5-billion worth of industry spinoffs could be achieved from the space station commitment by the year 2000.
  “(Science Minister) Oberle’s got this space station bit between his teeth and nothing will shake it loose,” said one senior government official, who asked to remain anonymous. “The industry and his closest advisers are feeding in what they think he wants to hear, rather than what he should be hearing about it.”
  Space expert and author John Lewis, a professor at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, said in a telephone interview that no single space agency program should be so large or all-consuming that it detracts from other space science efforts.
  Lewis is critical of NASA’s decision to put all of its eggs into one space basket twice in history; first with the manned-space program in the 1960s; and then with the space shuttle program.
  Canadian decision-makers must have a clear purpose in mind that goes beyond involvement with the space station and any of its sexy-sounding high-profile projects when the mandate for the space agency is created.
  Said Lewis: “The worst thing that can happen is setting it up without knowing what the government and industry want to achieve 20 years from now. It would take someone with limited intelligence to ask industry to (undertake projects) they don’t understand.
“Failing to do this would leave (Canada’s space program) destined to be small and unimportant.”
(Greg Barr is a reporter with The Ottawa Citizen.)
Whale hunt goes on, despite moratorium
by KEN MacQUEEN Southam News
 OTTAWA — No whales were to be hunted this year.
  After centuries of being stalked by man and after decades of protest ranging from Save the Whales bumper stickers to harassment of factory whaling ships by Greenpeace and other conservation groups. 1986 was to be the first year of an international ban on the commercial hunt of the giant sea mammals.
 Instead. Greenpeace estimates as many as 6.000 whales will be killed this year, many of them from populations on international endangered species lists.
 For mainstream conservation groups, the antiwhaling moratorium by the 40 member countries of the International Whaling Commission, while riddled with loopholes and flaws, has at least marked a new level of agreement on a vexing problem.
 But for Canadian Paul Watson, that wasn’t good enough.
  Last Sunday, members of his radical anti-whaling group, the Vancouver-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, sank two of Iceland’s four whaling vessels in Reykjavik harbor and, using sledgehammers and monkey wrenches, wrecked an isolated station where whale byproducts are processed.
  Watson claims the assault by his group saved the lives of hundreds of whales while drawing world attention to the wholesale violations of the interna-
tional ban on commercial whaling.
  More moderate conservation groups fear that with one violent act, his group may have also scuttled any hope for keeping the fragile anti-whaling moratorium alive.
  “I look in terms of how many years of effort might have been wasted,” said Beverly Pinnegar, a spokesman for the Greenpeace Foundation in Vancouver.
  International groups have worked for more than 20 years for a moratorium, said Pinnegar. “And finally, the year it goes in, someone has to go and pull a fool stunt like this.”
  In theory, the moratorium is a major victory for the International Whaling Commission, formed in 1946 to sponsor studies and recommend international limits on the harvest of the dwindling stock of whales.
  It has had some success. In the late 1960s, under pressure from conservation groups, the whaling nations agreed to completely protect several severely endangered species: the blue, right, gray and humpback whales.
  (Canada, which ceased all commercial whaling in 1972, pulled out of the organization in 1982, claiming its membership was no longer necessary.)
  In 1983, after years of studies and despite the fact that it has no enforcement powers, the international boay agreed to end all commercial whaling by 1986. It will review the moratorium in 1990.
  But so far, the hunt has not stopped.
  Japan, with probably the world’s largest market for whale meat, has resisted killing its 400-year-old whaling industry. Last month, a 23,000-tonne factory ship steamed out of Yokohama for the Antarctic, determined to catch more than 1,900 minke whales for their meat and valuable oil.
  However, both Japan and the Soviet Union, another major whaling nation, have reluctantly agreed to cease whaling after this season.
  A major factor in their decision, many conservation groups believe, has been pressure from the United States. U.S. laws restrict access to American fishing grounds as well as the import of fish from countries that violate whaling commission rulings.
 The major threat to the moratorium now comes from several countries, among them Iceland, Norway and South Korea, determined to exploit a clause in the international rules allowing "scientific whaling.”
 The clause was intended to let whaling nations keep tabs on the health and numbers of various whale stocks by a limited catch to conduct autopsies and other experiments. limit the catch, half of all whale meat from the scientific hahvest is to be consumed domestically.
  Iceland has used the clause to set a catch limit this year of 120 whales, incurring the wrath of a broad spectrum of conservation groups.
  “Iceland should own up to the fact that it is not
conducting scientific whaling,” said Michael O’Sullivan, Canadian representative of the World Society for the Protection of Animals, an umbrella organization of 360 conservation groups worldwide.
  To meet the letter of the whaling commission ruling, Iceland has launched a campaign to increase domestic consumption of whale meat, with much of it being used as mink feed in fur farms, said Russ Wild, a spokesman for Greenpeace in Washington. Almost half of the Icelandic catch still goes to the lucrative Japanese market.
  While not condoning the methods of Watson’s Sea Shepherd organization. Wild conceded, “I think Iceland is one of the more deserving of the outlaw nations — deserving in terms of being the subject of protest.”
  If the use of scientific whaling expands, Wild warned, “the moratorium is in danger of unravelling.”
  Almost lost in the furore in Reykjavik this week is the fact that there has been a slow but significant drop in the slaughter worldwide, to 6.000 whales this year from the peak 25 years ago when 67,000 whales were taken.
  The question environmental groups must wrestle with now, is whether to be content with that steady progress. The alternative, as Paul Watson decided, is to risk stiffening the resistance of such nations as Iceland by reverting from diplomacy to confrontation.