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.
I just looked into Telesat for the first time, and I’m happy if they actually do anything they say they’re gonna. I found that the canadian gov’t already injected 1.3bn into them in 2021. Further reading on their own website shows they only have one (1) “demo” sat in LEO launched in 2018, for “testing purposes”. So we’re now giving them another 2.2bn for what exactly? If this project turns out like some of the other semi-publicly funded or subsidized attempts at connecting northern canada it’s never going to happen, or like in the case of XPlore-Net turn out to be the shittiest overpriced attempt at internet providers ever to have existed. Tens of thousands of their customers bought a Starlink as soon as it became available to them, several years ago already.
I’ve traveled the north and I know a handful of people who grew up there literally on trap lines and in one case a fishing village in the northern section of Nunavut. I really am for everyone in Canada getting online. I’d like to have seen it happen a long time ago. I just don’t have a lot of faith in these publicly funded projects given their track record. And to be clear, I loathe the liberals as much as the conservatives, I’m not choosing a political side here. To put this another way, 3.3bn would go a long way towards building out the clean water infra that the gov’t has also been promising for decades. idfk call me crazy but there isn’t already a successful company going around offering that service for very cheap. Maybe we should be investing in areas where there’s not already a solution.
Your Telesat review is very biased. I didn’t know who they were until today, but they’ve been operating geo satellites for 60 years. They also don’t manufacture satellites, so their track record will have less bearing on how those satellites are made. Also, it says in the current article that the previous $1.3 billion deal didn’t go through. I tried to find more info, but the closest I got was Telesat’s press release that mentioned it being subject to various conditions, which may not have been met. That actually increases my confidence, since before they were going to just give them some money if certain conditions were met, and not they’re just getting a loan. Now, whether they actually pay it back… I’d be unsurprised to learn that part of their preparation for this was going public in 2021.
I’d be a little concerned about the manufacturer, MDA, who has gone through a number of mergers and spin-offs over the decades. I’m not certain, but it’s possible that Telesat and MDA had divisions that were spun off into each other at one point. They could have a strong core, or it could have all been sold off and the key people moved on. The fact they still have the Canadarm team and were selected for the first phase of Canadarm 3 gives a little hope, but has no bearing on their capability to manufacture the satellites needed for this array. That said, they do have some history with the antennas and such required for this project.
In short, neither of the key players in this satellite project are new entries, and in fact have had many successful projects over decades. Hopefully this project takes them to new heights.
Not sure how it’s biased, the piece about the 1.3bn was within the first five results that came up when I searched them. To be fair, I didn’t dig as deep as you did to find that that deal didn’t go through. Thanks for the correction, I didn’t know that. The gov-can website itself still has details about the deal, not sure why they wouldn’t have removed it if it didn’t happen. For context this is the article on canada.ca I was referring to (I wasn’t trying to be shady and I don’t appreciate being accused of that).
I don’t have a horse in this race. I personally don’t give a fuck about how the north gets connected per se as long as billions of public money isn’t wasted. Again, imo clean water infra is probably a lot more important in the long run for the people in the north considering there is already at least one viable service to connect to the internet with. I can’t quite wrap my head around why Telesat hasn’t left the “testing phase” in 6+ years. Your added context here makes me even more wary given the details about the company that would actually be manufacturing the LEO sats (and obviously… haven’t done so yet. Why is that?).
We all know why canadian cell and internet prices are among the highest in the world. It’s because our entire population is less than that which occupies the lower third of california. It costs a lot to build infrastructure to provide comms tech for each person per capita on this scale considering 95+ percent of our population lives along the US border. My point is that Starlink already has the infra in the northern sky, mostly because they have a pretty sizeable market in Alaska and the knock-off effect is there are already LEO sats within range of providing lots of northern canadian residents that same service. The rhetoric about national security is laughable given anyone with a debit card anywhere in the country can already order Starlink and have it delivered within the week. If you’re gonna go down that rabbit hole, let’s ban it across the country in favor of a domestic solution that might be available in another decade at the current rate of development. While we’re at it, let’s make it so that those fly-in communities in the north are only allowed to get food and supply deliveries on canadian-made airplanes and boats.
It all starts to break down when you think about it. This isn’t a political thing for me, it’s practical. I’m not a huge fan of government in any form (read my comment history). But since we’re all participating in this fucking shitshow let’s look at the facts and spend our collective tax money wisely. If that 2.2bn is actually going to mean most people in the north get cheap or free internet within the next decade I’d love to see it. Meanwhile, unfortunately, Starlink is already in place and working for that purpose. That’s just a fact, whether anyone likes Elon Musk or not. I fuckin don’t.
I specifically said borderline shady because I didn’t think you were trying to be shady. I also tried to find a source for the cancelation of the $1.3 billion, and all I have is the single line in the posted article about it. Not surprising that neither Telesat nor the government are going out of their way to announce the deal fell through, but I’d prefer it if they did, and I imagine you would, too.
The national security angle doesn’t mean you can’t use foreign services, it means you don’t have to use foreign services, especially when you consider a major user will be NORAD bases. This is particularly relevant given the shenanigans Musk has played in Ukraine.
While I think it’s easy to argue that internet connectivity is a necessity if you want to participate in the modern world, clearly water is even more important. We have seen decades of neglect on that front.
Well yeah… you wouldn’t have to use foreign services if a domestic alternative existed. One doesn’t for northern residents, yet. So here we are like many times in the past (like for getting northern people online, or getting them clean water to drink) talking about future, possible, great idea measures that will take place at some point instead of just doing the fucking thing.
I don’t love Starlink or Musk. However, I do own a Starlink dish and I have used it for the past couple of years for work. I know lots of other people who live in very remote areas who have been using it since it became available to them. Starlink took off in central and northern areas of Canada very quickly because it was the only (good) option for highspeed internet, and still is. And while it would be dope if a canadian competitor came along and made good on their potential, we’re still falling back into the fact that at best a canadian LEO internet company would have to launch their sats in the north for a total of 120k customers. Starlink has the Alaskan market which is upwards of 750k people, already. The canadian customers are just a bonus for them in that region, at that scale.
Why can’t we get northern people online now as well as develop a domestic solution? I don’t think it’s a stretch to say Telesat looks like another XPlore-net type solution (i.e. half-assed, at best, and maybe will never happen at this point). I’ve worked in tech for 4 years now. Currently for a fully private company, zero public or private/VC funding. But the first company I worked for took an obscene amount of public funding (lockdown subsidies which in fact is how I got hired) and a fuckton of tax breaks before and since. Sadly, they’ve also done a lot of screaming about the suggestion that they should pay their fair share of corporate tax. Not super relevant to this convo, but I do understand in some ways what’s at stake when a company takes public money (and still treats locals like shit). There are lots of examples of this going wrong, so I wouldn’t wanna see it be the only option on the table for any reason.
At any rate I think we agree that folks should probably have clean drinking water first anyhow.