OTTAWA — The Central Intelligence Agency closely tracked Canadian satellite and imaging research during the Cold War as part of the U.S. spy agency’s efforts to keep apace of global technology advances, declassified records show.

The CIA saw Canada’s fledgling telecommunications satellite network as an influential project that would set the standard for other nations planning to launch their own systems.

The agency also took a special interest in research by an Ottawa university on Soviet commercial enterprises, reveals a still heavily censored memorandum.

The records are among several CIA reports and memos dealing with Canada that were released to The Canadian Press under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

The CIA drafted a confidential 1972 intelligence memo on Canada’s Telesat communications system and attended high-tech mapping conferences in Ottawa and Montreal the same year.

The spy agency noted Canada would be the first country in the world to set up such a system using geostationary satellites, so-named because they match the pace of the Earth’s rotation and do not appear to be moving.

The CIA memo traces the history of the Canadian project, compares it with the Soviet Union’s domestic satellite operation, and assesses its importance to both Canada and the evolving science of space-enabled communications technology.

“Telesat will give a substantial boost to the Canadian national telecommunications system,” says the report prepared by agency economic researchers and distributed by the CIA’s directorate of intelligence.

The system would significantly expand television and telephone links, particularly in the North and other remote areas.

“Telesat’s operation will be followed with interest by many countries because it is the first of several national and regional comsat systems planned for development in the coming years,” says the memo.

“The developed countries will be observing Telesat closely for ideas that will prove useful in establishing their own systems.”

Less developed countries would be especially interested in Canada’s unmanned receiving stations as they could be useful in setting up educational TV networks, the CIA said.

Countries including West Germany, France, India and Indonesia would soon have their own communications satellites.

The CIA report is “remarkably detailed and quite insightful,” said University of Toronto historian and intelligence specialist Wesley Wark.

“I didn’t get from the record any sense that the Americans felt threatened by these Canadian developments, or felt worried about them,” Wark said. “But they clearly felt they were worth watching because Canada was seen as a pioneer.”

An unnamed CIA official filed a thorough eight-page report on his summer 1972 trip to Canada to take part in the 22nd International Geographical Congress, where scientists and other academics discussed developments in satellite imagery and early efforts in digital mapping.

“One problem that has arisen in some of these systems is maintaining the confidentiality of data on individuals and commercial enterprises,” the official wrote.

The comments anticipate future complaints about terrorists zeroing in on targets using satellite photos readily available on the Internet, said Steve Hewitt of the Department of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Birmingham in England.

A decade later, the CIA praised research by the Institute of Soviet and East European Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, which according to a confidential memo had compiled “the best and most comprehensive listing” of Soviet and East European commercial firms operating in the West.

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“I’m not surprised,” said Carl McMillan, now professor emeritus at Carleton and head of the institute when the research was done.

“The CIA had a major section devoted to the Soviet economy in particular, but the other countries as well. They were interested in all scholarly work on that area because of its potential strategic significance.

“Perhaps we were cited because we were the only ones doing this particular aspect of it.”