OTTAWA — When the United States briefly cut Ukraine off from satellite images it uses to help fight off Russia’s invasion, Canada appeared a likely solution: Ukraine had also used images from the Brampton, Ont.-based space company MDA, starting in 2022.

But the flow of that information stopped more than two years ago with no announcement by either the company or the federal government, meaning Ukraine will have to look elsewhere if U.S. President Donald Trump cuts it off for good.

MDA operates a satellite called Radarsat-2 that can capture images of the Earth’s surface in darkness and through clouds. Under a law called the Remote Sensing Space Systems Act, it needs permission from Global Affairs Canada to take such images over foreign territory.

Answering a call for help from Ukraine in March 2022, MDA secured that permission.

“We’re honoured that we are able to use our radar satellite capabilities to contribute to these international efforts, and will continue doing everything in our power to help the government of Ukraine protect its citizens,” MDA chief executive Mike Greenley wrote in a statement at the time.

In a recent email exchange with The Logic, MDA vice-president Amy MacLeod said the contribution is over.

“That authorization has expired and we are not currently distributing imagery of this area,” she wrote. Permission lapsed more than two years ago, she added—meaning it lasted only about a year. “Immediate requirements were met and there was no need for MDA Space to seek an extension to the authorization.”

The permission came from Global Affairs, MacLeod told The Logic. A spokesperson for the department initially said those approvals are not in its purview, but when pressed, said seeking that authorization is up to MDA.

“In order to continue activities beyond a period of duration specified by a licence, it is the licensee’s obligation to make a request to the regulatory section of Global Affairs Canada,” Global Affairs spokesperson Clémence Grevey wrote in an email. “Canada’s support for Ukraine in defending itself against Russia’s illegal invasion remains firm.”

Ukraine’s needs have evolved, said national security expert Wesley Wark, a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. He wrote about the MDA arrangement when it began, calling it a sign of a new kind of private-sector involvement in war.

“Ukraine needs all the intelligence help it can get, especially if the United States engages in these pauses,” he told The Logic.

In early March, the U.S. stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine, including satellite images from Maxar—MDA’s Colorado-based former parent company—after Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had a disastrous meeting in the Oval Office. The flow resumed a few days later, once Ukraine indicated openness to a ceasefire with Russia on terms proposed by the Trump administration.

MDA’s Radarsat satellites are equipped with synthetic aperture radar (SAR), which can create high-resolution images of the distant ground even at night and through clouds. In March 2022, just after Russia launched its invasion, Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, asked satellite companies for exactly that kind of intelligence. 

“SAR satellite data is important to understanding Russian troop and vehicles movements at night,” Fedorov wrote in an open letter, adding that “clouds cover 80 per cent of Ukraine during the day.”

Though it wasn’t one of the companies Fedorov called on, MDA stepped up a few days later. It and other satellite companies would combine forces to supply Ukraine with near real-time intelligence reports.

“Satellite imagery is really critical to follow the movements of Russian forces, to assess frontline situations, to assist in targeting in the use of drones or Ukrainian missile capabilities,” said Wark. Canada doesn’t have dedicated national intelligence satellites that can do this, but allowing the private sector to gather and share images was a way to support Ukraine nonetheless, he said.

As prime minister in 2023, on the anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Justin Trudeau said Canada would back Ukraine against Russia “as long it takes, as much as it takes.”

The Ukrainian Embassy in Ottawa didn’t respond to The Logic’s questions about the satellite images.

MDA has built three generations of Radarsat satellites in varying contractual arrangements with the Canadian government. The first one, Radarsat-1, is now space junk. The third-generation Radarsat Constellation of three smaller satellites was built for government use.

In between was Radarsat-2, which went up in 2007 from, ironically, the Russian-operated cosmodrome in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. MDA owns and operates the satellite on the government’s behalf, and sells images from it commercially.

Canada previously shared Radarsat-2 images with Ukraine, after Russia’s initial invasion of Crimea and Ukraine’s eastern provinces in 2014. Chrystia Freeland, then an opposition MP, said the Liberals supported the Conservative government’s decision completely.

But in May 2016, the Liberal government stopped that round of co-operation. Vetting the images before sharing them was cumbersome and Canada had better ways to help, a spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada told Postmedia at the time.

Canada was also concerned at the time about contributing to an escalation in hostilities, in case its intelligence helped Ukraine go on the offensive rather than repelling Russian attacks.

“I wouldn’t regard that concern as a very pertinent one in the context of the desperate circumstances, particularly these days, of Ukraine’s effort to defend itself,” Wark said, “So I really find it baffling, this decision.”

Satellite images aren’t just useful during fighting, Wark added.

“Our ability to share intelligence with Ukraine is going to be all that much more critical going forward into a ceasefire situation, into a possible peace settlement situation, and the monitoring of that peace settlement,” he said.