A $2.14-billion federal loan for an Ottawa-based satellite operator has Canadian politicians arguing about whether American billionaire Elon Musk poses a national security risk.
The fight involves internet connectivity in remote regions as Canada tries to live up to its promise to connect every Canadian household to high-speed internet by 2030.
A week ago, the Liberal government announced the loan to Telesat, which is launching a constellation of low Earth orbit satellites that will be able to connect the most remote areas of the country to broadband internet.
Conservative MP Michael Barrett objected to the price tag, asking Musk in a social media post how much it would cost to provide his Starlink to every Canadian household that does not have high-speed access.
“$2.14 billion for a local company?! why don’t we just have a foreign billionaire do it for $2.09 billion and then another $1 billion when he fucks it up?”
It’s an easy reaction to have when you only read the headline. But if you do the math, Starlink already provides service to most of the north at less than $200/mo per person. There are less than 120k people in the northern territories. That 2.2bn works out to something like 85 years of Starlink service per person in the north (assuming everyone there needs an individual dish, which isn’t the case). Myself and a couple of other commentors have done some looking into Telesat as a company and they launched one (1) LEO “test sat” in 2018 and haven’t done a fucking thing since to get northern people online in a timely fashion.
If you actually talk to people who live in the north most of them who can afford to already have Starlink, because it works far better than Xplore which was the only option previously, for many years. Most northern mining, logging, and oil camps are also getting their workers online with Starlink and have been for a few years already.
I’ve not a fan of Elon, or the canadian libs, or the conservative party. But this whole discussion is kinda bullshit. As far as I’m concerned Elon Musk is guillotine lube, top of the list. The day after he is beheaded, Starlink as a company will continue operating. Which, frankly, is best-case scenario. idk what else to say about that.