Com Dev International Ltd., a major provider of space hardware will lay off 31 of its Canadian employees due to government cutbacks, according to an article in The Record.
The company was to provide communications technology for ships communicating with sattelites for Canadian Space Agency’s Radarsat Constellation Mission. But now that funding for the satellite program has been called into question, the company had to make cuts at its Ottawa division, CEO Mike Pley said in a press release. The mission was to take place in 2016 or 2017.
The Canadian Space Agency’s budget has been stagnant at $300 million a year for quite some time, he explained, and was further cut by 10 per cent this year. Pley warned that while Canada has a world-class space program, “it is at risk of slipping,” according to the article.
Com Dev is a highly specialized firm that custom builds hardware for space environments, such as C-band downlinks, Microwave communications equipment and remote sensing devices.