New Project Sharpens Focus on Canada

OTTAWA — The Honourable Gary Lunn, Minister of Natural Resources, today announced a five-year, $2.4-million project to provide access to new, high-quality satellite images of Canada. Speaking at the 2006 Geomatics Leaders Forum in Ottawa, Minister Lunn also announced that the improved and standardized satellite images will be available to all Canadians for free over the Internet.

The newer and higher-quality images will be used for mapping, monitoring Canadian wetland areas and managing natural resources, and will support government decision and policy makers in the fields of public safety, health and the environment, as well as our northern and Aboriginal communities.

"This investment will deliver more up-to-date and higher resolution images for our energy, mining and forestry industries," said Minister Lunn. "Enhanced satellite data are part of this new government's commitment to securing long-term prosperity and competitiveness for these industries."

Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) will coordinate and manage the project, ensure the quality of the data and liaise with the contractors, TELUS Corporation and Iunctus Geomatics Corp., who are supplying the satellite images.

Other Government of Canada organizations in the project include Agriculture and Agri-Food, National Defence, Environment, Parks, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, and the national partnership initiative GeoConnections. Along with their provincial and territorial partners, they work under Canada's GeoBase initiative.

Canadians will be able to access these new images through GeoBase (www.geobase.ca), which is an approach to the management of geospatial data in Canada in which different levels of government work together to share the cost of providing up-to-date data. Through the GeoBase portal on the Internet, government and individual users have access to high-quality geospatial information at no cost and with unrestricted use.

GeoConnections is a national partnership program, led by NRCan, that is evolving and expanding an on-line resource. This resource — www.cgdi.ca — enables Canadians to use and combine maps and satellite images over the Internet to gain new insights into social, environmental and economic issues.

http://www.geobase.ca/

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• GeoBase