A year or two ago, a few Canadian launch companies were trying to develop small rockets, but if we’re being frank, the industry was not particularly notable. Sure, something interesting might eventually happen, but no one outside of a few Canadian space geeks was paying much attention.

But then the Trump Administration started threatening and instituting tariffs. There was talk of making Canada the 51st state. And pretty much every Canadian I know began telling me how enraged they were at their neighbors to the south. It’s hard to blame them.

This has led the Canadian government to reassess all manner of areas where it had previously been happy to rely largely on the US government and American companies for goods and services. This included sovereign access to space. So this spring, the government announced the first awards to three companies—NordSpace, Reaction Dynamics, and Canada Rocket Company—to support work on rockets with “light lift” capability.

Decision to go bigger

The initial awards as part of Launch the North were modest, $8.33 million CAD, but the government has signaled larger awards in the future. Accordingly, one of these three companies, Toronto-based Canada Rocket Company, decided it would skip the small-rocket phase and move directly into a more ambitious medium-launch vehicle.

“The advice we got from having spoken with about 150 engineers, from the director of Starship engineering all the way down to some entry-level folks, is that you’re not going to be able de-risk a rocket development program by building a smaller rocket,” said Hugh Kolias, chief executive of the Canada Rocket Company, in an interview.

“From a technical perspective and an infrastructure perspective, essentially 90 percent of everything you do on that light lift piece gets thrown out the window, and it’s almost like a net new program,” Kolias said. “And everyone said, if you’re not going to try to commercialize light lift, then why even do it in the first place? And that kind of hit us relatively hard.”

So the company set its sights higher: developing the R-2 rocket, a fairly standard medium-lift vehicle that in renderings somewhat resembles SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. There are nine methane-fueled engines, a gas-generator engine cycle, and landing legs that signal a future path toward reuse of the first stage. It could carry up to 12.5 metric tons to low-Earth orbit. If all goes well, Kolias said, the company could be ready to launch by 2032.

That would be fantastic, but is any of this realistic?

Canada goes defensive

Maybe so, because the mood in Canada is angry. For decades, Canada has relied on the United States, broadly, for defense. Famously, in 1959, the Canadian Prime Minister canceled the Avro Arrow interceptor aircraft under development in the country. Since then, Canada’s aerospace industry has largely languished. The country’s satellites typically go to space on American rockets.

But sovereignty is back in vogue. Earlier this year, Canada unveiled a Defense Industrial Strategy that would ensure the country has a strong industrial and technological base to support defense readiness. Space is one of the 10 capabilities outlined in the report, which includes “space launch” as a priority.

“I think the geopolitics has actually created a fantastic opportunity, not just for us, but for other Canadian industries to finally build real ambitious industries,” Kolias said. “We’re pulling a little bit away from the globalist movement and realizing that there are some core aspects, both economically and from a sovereign or defense and military perspective, that you should own your own destiny.”

Eventually, Kolias said, the Canadian government might put as much as half a billion dollars on the table for a sovereign launch capability, along with some guarantee of launch contracts.

Canada Rocket Company remains small for now with about 30 people—a core of which are Canadian rocket scientists who left to work at places like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Rocket Lab but have now returned north. But the company has raised $22.5 million to date and is going to market with a Series A fundraise. So growth is coming.

An Artemis-named test stand

After his participation in Artemis II, becoming the first non-American astronaut to fly into deep space, Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen became a national hero. Kolias tapped into this space patriotism by naming the company’s rocket engine test facility, near London, Ontario, after Hansen.

On Thursday, the company announced that the $30 million Jeremy Hansen Test Facility will be sited on 50 acres leased from the Greater London International Airport Authority and will include an engine test area with up to three vertical and horizontal test stands for static engine testing, capable of testing engines with more than 1MN in thrust (225,000 pounds of thrust). Kolias said he intends to begin testing the E-1 engine there in about two years.

Hansen has played an interesting geopolitical role over the last year. His flight on Artemis II was an unqualified success, raising the prestige of Canada’s space agency. At the same time, Canada’s achievement came on the wings of America’s space program. So how to feel about this at a time of tension between the two nations? Perhaps it offers some hope that they can remain good neighbors, with warm relations resuming in the future—while Canada also has the capability to launch its own rockets.