Canadian rugby league club Ottawa Aces are set to join League 1 next year.

Eric Perez, who founded Super League side Toronto Wolfpack in 2016 and oversaw their promotion to the Championship before making way for Australian billionaire David Argyle, unveiled the new club on Monday.

The Aces were spawned through a re-location of Hemel to the Canadian capital and will play home games at the 24,000-capacity TD Place.

As with Toronto, Perez says they will be full-time from the start and fund all travel and accommodation costs for visiting teams “until collectively we all feel we don’t need to anymore”.

The club will have a base in the UK and former Hemel director of rugby Dean Thomas will have an administrative role.

The team are likely to play blocks of home matches, starting towards the end of March, but have yet to appoint a coach and will wait until the June deadline for out-of-contract players to finalise signings.

The Aces will copy the model of Toronto, who achieved their initial five-year target of reaching Super League with two years to spare, while heeding the lessons of the Wolfpack, who have lost all six top-flight matches so far.

"A five-year plan makes a lot of sense for us, if it takes a bit longer so be it," Perez said.

"The number one plan is to get into the Championship and hover around the top of the table until we make it into Super League.

"I'm not looking to rush my way up to Super League.

"I'm looking to provide the people of Ottawa with a competitive, exciting, fun-to-watch team in a great atmosphere that is capable of beating anyone on any day.

"I want to make sure that, once we get to Super League, we're sustainable and we can stay up there.

"It's a tough transition to go from Championship to Super League."

Perez hopes to head off the criticism that has come Toronto's way by striving to include Canada-born players from the start.

"I think it's important that we can actually develop our own players on both sides of the pond, in the UK and Canada," he said.

"We would love to have Canadian players and we will try to seek out Canadian players, at least a couple.

"I will say this though, when the Toronto Raptors started in the NBA in 1995 they had no Canadian players and now they not only have Canadian players but players from Toronto littering the NBA with the second biggest nationality.

"Young people were inspired to play by the exploits of the professional team and that created an entire culture of player.

"These things take time."

Ottawa were initially given the go-ahead to enter the RFL pyramid in 2020 and Perez, who is chairman of the new club, says the delay was due to prolonged discussions over central distribution.

With a seven-strong board and more than 20 investors, Perez says finance will not be an issue but claims their insistence on central distribution, which was and continues to be denied to Toronto, was a matter of principle.

"We weren't going to come in unless we were getting a fair deal," he said.

"We will be getting a percentage of central distribution and working our way towards getting all the distribution in a few years."