The Canadian Government Just Funded Space AND Environmental Research

For the first time in a long time, Canada's conservative Harper Government is doing something that might actually end up helping the environment, pledging today to spend $7 million to monitor Canada from space.

The announcement comes on the heels of announcing it wanted in on NASA's Mars 2020 rover and coming out with a very public plan to revitalize the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). Essentially, by funding space, something it loves, the Canadian government might end up helping something it hasn't indicated it cares a whole lot about: the environment.

Though it never mentioned climate change or even environmental protection, companies who stand to benefit from the move say that the funding will definitely play a role in monitoring the changing environment.

Paul Adlakha, Executive Director for C-CORE, one of the private companies receiving CSA funding, confirmed to me that the technology from his firm will be used to examine water systems and the effects of climate change from space.

"Part of the project is to look at water trends and base those so that scientists can determine if they're occurring 'naturally' because of climate‎ change or related to upstream human activity," Adlakha told me in an email.

In addition, he said similar systems from his company are already "being used to monitor forest fires."

Industry Canada said the new observation satellite systems will specifically monitor natural disasters, help the agricultural industry surveil crops, keep a close watch on forests, and study river ice.

It's about time.

Between the ongoing oil sands conundrum, biblical forest fires burning across the Northwest Territories (causing apocalyptic fire storms), sweltering temperatures in British Columbia, and the dumpcano in Nunavut—these days, environmental news is unavoidable in Canada.

And that might be at least partly the reason the government is funding wider surveillance of Canada's vast territory.

Perhaps as a placating shout out to the oil industry types known to support the Conservative government from western Canada, the observation system will also monitor "pipelines and oil and gas transportation."

Which should be a more tightly monitored concern for the Canadian feds, given the recent wealth of high profile mining disasters and train derailments involving cars carrying crude.

NASA already has a similar observation satellite system monitoring earthly events. Last year, it was the American space agency's satellites that provided the stunning images from the Lac Megantic train derailment, allowing regular Canadians to see photos of the explosion from space and the smoke clouds that billowed on for days.

Those kinds of images, and the ones to be made available by this new investment, could help convince the few Canadian climate change deniers left (and Tory supporters) that the environment needs to be aggressively protected.

Whether the Harper government meant to or not, the new space funding venture shows a growing acceptance from the Conservative party that the environment is changing and Canadians need to be aware. Seeing the melting glaciers, burning oil fields, and forest fires from space might just make that easier.