Years of federal bureaucratic delay may cost the North millions of dollars in investment in an emerging high-tech industry.
A Norwegian company has been waiting since 2016 for Ottawa to grant an operating licence for a satellite ground receiving station in Inuvik, N.W.T. The delay has limited services the company can provide to increasingly restive clients and its partner is considering moving.
“We’re quite frustrated with the pace of the Canadian bureaucracy,” said Rolf Skatteboe, president of Norway-based Kongsberg Satellite Services, or KSAT.
Inuvik, on the N.W.T.’s northern tip, is considered a prime location for receiving stations for earth observation satellites. The first station was built there in the mid-2000s by the federal government for RADARSAT, its own earth observation
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