Ontario cancels Starlink contract in retaliation to Trump’s tariffs
Cutting off your nose to spite your face: The Ontario government yesterday canceled a $100 million Starlink contract it had with SpaceX to provide internet service to remote areas, doing so in retaliation to Trump’s tariffs.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford threatened to cancel the contract in February if U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods were imposed. He killed the deal in March when U.S. President Donald Trump moved ahead with tariffs. “It’s done, it’s gone,” Ford said at the time. “We won’t award contracts to people who enable and encourage economic attacks on our province … and our country.”
…Ford’s cancellation of the deal came as part of a suite of measures in retaliation to Trump’s tariffs. He pulled American booze off the shelves of LCBO stores in March and has said the U.S. booze ban will be kept in place until Trump removes his tariffs on Canada. Ford also banned American companies from bidding on $30 billion worth of procurement contracts the province awards each year. He also banned U.S. companies from bidding on contracts related to his $200-billion infrastructure plan to build highways, tunnels, transit, hospitals, and jails.
It appears the province had to pay SpaceX a penalty for canceling the contract, but the amount has not been revealed. The cancellation also leaves those rural areas stranded, as the government presently has no alternative service to offer.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Cutting off your nose to spite your face: The Ontario government yesterday canceled a $100 million Starlink contract it had with SpaceX to provide internet service to remote areas, doing so in retaliation to Trump’s tariffs.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford threatened to cancel the contract in February if U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods were imposed. He killed the deal in March when U.S. President Donald Trump moved ahead with tariffs. “It’s done, it’s gone,” Ford said at the time. “We won’t award contracts to people who enable and encourage economic attacks on our province … and our country.”
…Ford’s cancellation of the deal came as part of a suite of measures in retaliation to Trump’s tariffs. He pulled American booze off the shelves of LCBO stores in March and has said the U.S. booze ban will be kept in place until Trump removes his tariffs on Canada. Ford also banned American companies from bidding on $30 billion worth of procurement contracts the province awards each year. He also banned U.S. companies from bidding on contracts related to his $200-billion infrastructure plan to build highways, tunnels, transit, hospitals, and jails.
It appears the province had to pay SpaceX a penalty for canceling the contract, but the amount has not been revealed. The cancellation also leaves those rural areas stranded, as the government presently has no alternative service to offer.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
I have been at my cottage in Ontario for a month now (Not even out of Central Ontario, the province is that big) and I rely on Starlink for Internet. Best we can get is ASDL that is barely 2 Megs down, 0.1 Meg up.
Starlink is awesome. Weekends it is a bit slower as all the cottagers are home watching movies. But during the workweek performance is better than anything the local Bell can offer.
Works in most weather though severe, heavy, pounding rain (usually only get moments of it) it may fail. But rarely more than 1-2 minutes. We have longer power outages.
My understanding was they were going to use Starlink as long haul, so that for seriously isolated communities in the real north, having a Starlink dish, would allow the community to have phone and internet service.
I am sure Premier Ford will simply go to the nearest competitor and use them instead. Oh wait, there isn’t any for this use case. Stupid childish behavior.
As long as Canadians can still pay for internet should they want it, I don’t see a problem. Neither Ontario or Washington are buying me internet.
This is so childish and by a supposed group of adults. The Canuks want the U.S. to support them by buying their goods but don’t mind charging high tariffs on U.S. goods. They are also allowing the Northern Border to be quite porous which is part of the equation. We have a saying in the military about doing something disgusting in your mess kit and the Canadians seem to be doing it in full force.
geoffc–
Great info.
Throughout July, Starlink was offering me free equipment with a 12-month sign-up.
Off thread– can you enlighten me on the status of all the wildfires going on in Canada? I’m in Michigan and we’ve been having a lot of air-quality issues recently, smells like pine and burnt sugar….
I am ashamed of our Canadian politicians actions right now.
Not only Ford but Carney’s desire to recognize a Palestinians state at the UN, which funnels money to Hamas.
We would be surprised to really know how much countries funnel money to terrorists through back door channels.
Most Canadians using Starlink aren’t being served under this cancelled government contract – they sign up and pay monthly as individuals. Those “remote areas” that were being served under the erstwhile contract are, I suspect, mainly settlements of First Nations people – as the Canadians refer to them. But there is also the possibility that scattered rural government facilities might also be cut off. It would be a bit rich if the Mounties were counted among the collateral damage of this rather idiotic move.
No wonder the Western four provinces are restive and looking to hive themselves off from Ontario and Quebec.
Hello Dick,
It’s weird, but it is looking like there is a possibility of dueling referendums on Alberta secession in the works.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/anti-separation-petition-approved-1.7597522
But the catch is, the anti-independence one actually has to collect a lot more signatures on its petition to get approval.
Richard M,
Trying to make sense of Canadian politics is a chore that makes the erstwhile field of Kremlinology look clean and logical by comparison.
The details will, no doubt, be so baroque as to defy explication, but from the 30,000 foot level it seems to me that Canada, as currently constituted, is doomed. Ontario and Quebec continue to operate as though it’s still the 60s. Western Canada seems all but certain to go its separate way sometime within the next ten years, probably within the next five. I don’t foresee it becoming part of the US. It has everything needed to make a go of being a separate nation except a military commensurate with its size and wealth. That, it can acquire, via treaty, from the US.
What will happen to the rest of Canada is less clear. Perhaps at the same time as Western Canada’s cleavage, or a bit later, after some additional hugger-mugger, I see Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut joining Western Canada.
Once the welfare checks stop coming from Ontario – by way of Alberta – Quebec will likely choose to make its situation still worse by actually seceding. I have no idea how an independent Quebec would be able to sustain itself in the style to which it has become accustomed, especially once all the Anglophone-only folks now living there have fled back to Ontario or some other part of the former Canada. I don’t think mother-country France would be interested in acquiring another overseas department, ala French Guiana.
The departure of Quebec would discontiguate the Maritimes from the rest of what used to be Canada. All four would be well-advised, in that case, to unite as, say, Eastern Canada, and, like Quebec – and even Ontario – get about the business of figuring out how to make a go of involuntary independence with alacrity.
The US, for its part, should prepare for the necessity of making at least four defense cooperation deals with the shards of the former Canada instead of just one. This should prove straightforward anent the notional Western Canada, especially if the northern territories are part of that package. If, for whatever reason, they are not taken aboard Western Canada, then we should take them on as US territories strictly for defense reasons.
Ontario, Quebec and the notional Eastern Canada are more problematic from a defense cooperation perspective. The US should probably prepare to have three more failed/problematical states on its borders – in addition to Mexico – two of which would likely be at least as hostile to the US as is Mexico at present.
One potential future palliative to the defense perimeter problem would be for the northern marches of both Ontario and Quebec to split off from their US-borderlands major population concentrations and join Western Canada or be taken on as additional US territories. This would likely not be possible without some serious arm-twisting or ransom-paying by either or both the US and Western Canada, but, after a few years of a comparatively penurious independence, both Ontario and Quebec might look favorably on trading a lot of barely-populated territory for some kind of annuity arrangement.