It seems some within industry are not pleased with the Canadian Space Agency’s decision to close the David Florida Laboratory.

An anonymous person using the handle Canadian Space Industry has started a Change.org to petition. The petition was started on June 19 and the current goal is to reach 10,000 signatures. At the time of publication there were 8,486 signatures which is a significant number considering the size of Canada’s space industry.

SpaceQ was contacted by an industry professional to make us aware of the petition. We tried to find out who was behind the petition but weren’t able to.

On May 1 the Canadian Space Agency issued a Request for Information, now closed, to gage interest in seeing if any organization would lease the lab.

That same day, Éric Vachon, the Canadian Space Agency’s (CSA) Acting VP of Corporate Strategy and Innovation and Chief Financial Officer stated at the Space Horizon’s conference in Ottawa that the CSA had no choice but to close the lab in response to government mandated budget cuts. “As a government agency, we are faced with exciting opportunities, but also with some challenges,” he said. “One of them was the very difficult decision to close the David Florida Laboratory’s operations as of March 31st, 2025. This decision happened as part of the refocusing government spending exercise.”

The petition in part states that “The David Florida Laboratory (DFL) is Canada’s national facility for space technology testing.  It houses major test equipment not found elsewhere in a single place including but not limited to equipment for tests in thermal vacuum, vibration, antenna pattern, electromagnetic compatibility and mass properties.  Furthermore, the expertise of the DFL staff is well known both nationally and internationally, enabling DFL to offer reliable and efficient services to Canadians.  There is no other facility like it in Canada.”

The same industry professional who contacted us about the petition said DFL “is the *only* place in Canada where larger items of space equipment can be tested (vibration testing, thermal-vacuum testing in particular).”

While some facilities in Canada can handle some of the work including Ottawa’s Space Simulation Services of Canada, they can’t handle the larger items.

The organizer of the petition posted an update on July 23 encouraging those interested in saving the facility to contact their local member of Parliament and have provided a form letter to use as a template.

Some of the signatories include former employees of DFL and others who have worked or work in industry and at the CSA. A small sample of comments include;

Tahir Merali, who used to work at the CSA and is the Co-founder Zenith Canada Pathways Foundation which supports young Canadians entering the space sector said, “Canada’s spaceflight qualification relevance on the world stage in spacecraft Assembly, Integration and Testing (AIT) is threatened by this budgetary-driven closure. With no foreseeable relaxation on export controls legislation with friendly allies, Canadian NewSpace companies risk entirely relocating to other nations with closer / reliable access to such facilities with better incentives, rather than having to deal with the redtape time and cost of export control and ultra-reliable cross-border shipping this closure will perpetuate. Let’s support and bolster innovation and progress in our economy, not make it even more difficult.”

Chris Robson, the CEO of Wyvern whose small satellites provide Earth observation data said, “Canada needs spacecraft testing infrastructure.”

And Grant Bonin, Co-founder of gravityLab and who has worked as a Manager of Satellite Missions at the Space Flight Laboratory and Chief Engineer, Space Systems at Rocket Lab said, “DFL is a world-class test end-to-end facility. I’ve had the privilege of doing environmental test campaigns of satellites spanning three orders of magnitude in size there. Good luck recovering this capability if it goes away… In an era where more and more satellites of all sizes with more capability are being built, and it being never-easier for Canadian talent to depart to U.S. opportunities, losing this capability instead of maintaining and building upon it would be yet another example of Canada’s disinterest in space leadership.”