Ottawa's Calian Group and Invest Ottawa announced the launch of the Northstar Defence Lab on Tuesday, September 29. The lab will be based at Area X.O, the city's research complex and testing ground for autonomous vehicles, drones and other next-generation technology on Woodroffe Avenue.
Built around the mission, not one product
Chris Pogue, president of Calian's defence and space division, said the idea is to get companies working alongside each other rather than in isolation. "We're going to have companies come together, we're going to test ourselves, we're going to adapt," he said. Pogue added that Northstar is being designed around the mission, not around any one product or company.
Who's involved
The lab's initial partners include fellow Ottawa defence-tech companies Adga Group, Anvil, Larus Technologies and Tactiql. They'll be joined at the outset by Toronto-based artificial intelligence company Cohere, Burlington's Evertz Microsystems, and two Quebec-based firms, Tessellate Robotics and 123 Cyber.
Adga chief growth officer Jana Lee Murray said the collaboration reflects how much the sector has changed. "If you go back five years, it was an extremely siloed industry," she said.
A new building on the way
Calian is constructing a dedicated building at the Area X.O site for the lab, and expects it to be ready early next year.
Part of a bigger push
Calian CEO Patrick Houston tied the lab to the company's broader strategy, saying Calian is investing in the technologies, companies and collaborative infrastructure needed to move at pace alongside the modernizing Canadian Armed Forces.
Northstar is the first lab in what Calian has planned as a national network of regional defence development labs, meaning Ottawa is the starting point for a model the company intends to replicate elsewhere in the country. It's also described as a tangible next step in Calian's initiative, announced back on January 26, to mobilize an initial $100 million for sovereign C5ISRT capabilities, the communications, command and intelligence systems increasingly central to defence contracts.
What it means for Ottawa
Northstar adds a defence-specific anchor tenant to that site, and with Calian treating it as the first of several planned labs across the country, Ottawa is positioned as the model for how the rest get built.
Sources: Ottawa Business Journal, Canadian Manufacturing, SpaceQ
