Episode 40: Lucy Stojak, Chair of the Space Advisory Board

My guest this week is Lucy Stojak who is the Director of the School on Management of Creativity and Innovation at HEC Montréal. Lucy is also the Chair of the Space Advisory Board.It was just about a year ago that ISED Minister Bains announced the then 10 member Space Advisory Board. Last summer an additional member was added, Kate Howells, to represent the advocacy segment. I will note that that Board members are not employees of the government, serve on a voluntary basis and are not paid. All members work either in academia, industry, research, not-for-profit or in the case of Kate Howells, public outreach and advocacy. It’s been a very busy year for the Board so let me quickly recap it. According to the government when it announced in October 2016 that it was forming a new Space Advisory Board, the board would "advise the Government of Canada on long-term objectives for space and to engage with Canadians.”As soon as the Board was announced last April it began a cross-Canada in-person stakeholder consultation by invitation, though if you asked to participate, as I did, you could participate. This was followed by two virtual events titled Canada’s Youth and Next Generation Space Leaders and the North and Canada’s Future in Space. All these events were wrapped up by May 19. Over 180 people participated in person or online. Afterwards the Board wrote a report titled Consultations on Canada’s Future in Space: What We Heard which summarized what they had heard from stakeholders during the consultations. While the report was written quickly according to sources who spoke to SpaceQ, it was not released until mid-August.The report had two recommendations from issues they categorized in six themes. The two top level recommendations were to Designate space as a national strategic asset and what the Future role of the Space Advisory Board would be. The detail though was in the six themes. Those themes were;1. Designating space as a National Strategic Asset 2. Strengthen world-class Canadian capabilities3. Adopting new policies and regulations to capitalize on technological advances4. Continuity of policies and sustainable funding5. Outreach and educational activities to inspire and prepare Canadians6. An urgent call to actionToday Lucy and I will discuss the results of the consultation, budget 2018 and where the space advisory board goes from here.

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