and convection cycle, magnetospheric instabilities, the formation of the aurora, and the acceleration, transport, and loss of magnetospheric plasma. Technical Description of the Instrument Network The CGSM science objectives dictate the observational requirements. In short, the program is designed to specify particle precipitation (aurora), electric currents, and plasma convection in the ionosphere over a large region of Canada. This requires networks of ground-based magnetometers, ionosondes, High-Frequency radars, all-sky imagers, meridian scanning photometers, and riometers. Furthermore, these networks must have overlapping Fields-of-View that span latitudes from the polar region, through the auroral zone, to sub-auroral latitudes. The observations must be of sufficient time and spatial resolution, and of sufficient quality (what determines quality depends on the instrument in question) to allow for new science to be derived from the observations. Anticipated CGSM stakeholders met in Edmonton in June 2002 to initiate planning for the program. An ambitious plan was settled on, requiring numerous new instruments of various types to be deployed in challenging remote environments. The instruments would need to operate autonomously for long periods, and suffer few breakdowns. Much of the data would need to be recovered in real-time in order for CGSM to develop into an important space weather program, in addition to its space science objectives. New instruments would need to be acquired, outfitted and fielded at existing and new sites. To accomplish this, the team settled on using Telesat Canada's HSi High Speed Satellite Internet system, in conjunction with an information technology infrastructure (basically a glorified local area network with additional capabilities including UPS, GPS, and attached hard-disk storage). Further, members of the team applied to the Canada Foundation for Innovation for funds for new instruments, and were successful on all fronts. The resulting funding enabled the deployment (which is still ongoing) of an additional 8 All-Sky Imagers, 14 fluxgate magnetometers, 8 induction coil magnetometers, and two additional SuperDARN radars (the new "PolarDARN" radars). In addition to facilities that were already in place in 2002 (from the Canadian Space Agency's CANOPUS program, the Natural Resources Canada CANMOS magnetometer array, and the NSERC supported NORSTAR, SuperDARN, and CADI programs), the final array will certainly meet the scientific requirements. CGSM began formally with the issuing of contracts to teams at the University of Calgary (photometers, riometers, ASIs), the University of Alberta (simulation, data management, fluxgate magnetometers), and the University of Saskatchewan (SuperDARN HF radars with a subcontract to the