Canada Is Building Its Own Starlink, and Elon’s Burner Accounts Are Losing Their Minds
CANADA JUST BUILT ITS OWN SPACE PROGRAM, AND ELON’S ALREADY MAD ABOUT IT
Telesat Lightspeed is real, it’s happening, and it means a man-child in Washington can never turn Canada’s lights off again
There’s a post going around from what appears to be one of Elon Musk’s burner accounts — and yes, he has them, we all know — clutching pearls over the idea that Canada would dare build its own satellite network. The post drips with the kind of condescension you’d expect from a guy who spent his twenties demanding Canada’s immigration system fast-track him and then spent his fifties trying to annex the country.
The gist: “Elon already has 10,000 satellites. Canada can’t compete. Socialism bad.”
Sir. Sir. Nobody said we were trying to beat you in a dick-measuring contest. We’re trying to make sure you can’t turn our internet off. That’s a very different conversation, and the fact that you’re THIS rattled by it tells us everything we need to know.
WHAT CARNEY ACTUALLY ANNOUNCED
Speaking to Australia’s parliament last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that a Canadian-based constellation of low-earth orbit satellites will launch next year to provide reliable and secure global communications, and that Canada is working with like-minded partners who possess similar capabilities to build out a deep and resilient system they can all share and control in their own territories.
He wasn’t vague about why, either. Carney alluded directly to the restrictions Musk placed on Ukraine’s use of Starlink during its war with Russia, while underscoring the importance of sovereign satellite capabilities. Translation: the Prime Minister of Canada stood in front of an allied parliament and said, on the record, we watched what Elon did to Ukraine and we’re not letting that happen to us.
The network in question is Telesat Lightspeed — a network of nearly 200 LEO satellites that was given a $2.14-billion federal loan in 2024 to expand internet and 5G connectivity across Canada, including in remote and Indigenous communities that have long been without fast, reliable service. It will also, critically, help the federal government bolster its satellite communications technology and support NATO and NORAD modernization.
This isn’t a vanity project. Satellite communications are now listed as one of 10 key sovereign capabilities in Canada’s new defence industrial strategy. Space is defence now. Canada figured that out. The guy rage-posting on X apparently hasn’t.
WHY CANADA DOESN’T TRUST ELON WITH OUR SOVEREIGN DATA. AND SHOULDN’T.
Let’s be blunt about this, because the Elon fanboys want to pretend it’s some abstract “socialism vs. free market” debate when it is, in fact, a very concrete“one unstable billionaire with a political agenda controls your military communications” debate.
In September 2022, Musk ordered Starlink switched off in Ukraine during a pivotal push by the Ukrainian military to retake territory from Russia. Not a technical glitch. Not a billing issue. A man in California made a unilateral decision about which country gets to use communications infrastructure in an active war zone, and he made that decision in Russia’s favour.
Suck on that if you’re Canadian…
Now imagine that man is simultaneously the head of DOGE, the closest confidant of a president who has openly floated annexing Canada, and the guy whose satellites your Arctic military operations run on. Canadian defence experts have noted that having one supplier, particularly when that supplier is outside the government’s control, is a dangerous situation. That’s not socialism, it’s basic operational security. Your local Tim Hortons wouldn’t run its POS system through a server controlled by a guy who’s openly hostile to Canada. Why would our military?
Eutelsat’s Canadian representative put it plainly: their alternative gives Canada the ability to not be under the control of a singular individual who could decide to disconnect the service for political or other reasons. The fact that this sentence needed to be said out loud in 2025 is wild, but here we are.
THE BAN. YES, THERE’S A BAN.
Canada’s use of Starlink came under direct scrutiny after Trump launched his trade war against Canada, when Musk was serving as a special adviser to Trump and leading DOGE’s efforts to slash government budgets. The response was swift and real. Ontario cancelled its $100-million contract with Starlink — a deal signed in 2024 intended to provide satellite internet to 15,000 remote homes and businesses — as part of Premier Doug Ford’s retaliation against U.S. tariffs. Other provinces and territories followed, reconsidering their own contracts and actively seeking made-in-Canada alternatives.
Eutelsat, a rival partly owned by the French and UK governments, is now pitching Canada on a $250-million plan to provide the Canadian military with secure satellite broadband coverage in the Arctic. France and Britain. Our allies. Not a guy who asked Elon on Twitter if he’d do it cheaper. (Yes, that happened. A Canadian Maple MAGA Conservative MP literally did that. He did not cover himself in glory.)
BACK TO THE BURNER ACCOUNT
“But Elon has 10,000 satellites!”
Cool. Ukraine had access to them too, right up until they didn’t. The point isn’t the quantity of satellites. The point is who controls the kill switch and the data. And call us crazy, we don’t trust the US or Elon Musk.
“But it’s expensive!”
Telesat received a loan — not a grant — and will pay 9% interest while giving up roughly 12% equity to the federal and Quebec governments. It’s an investment with returns, not a cheque written to a friend. Try reading past the headline sometimes.
“But they’ll never compete with Starlink!”
Nobody cares if we “compete” in the Elon-brained sense of the word. We care that Canada’s military can communicate in the Arctic without Elon Musk having the option to make it stop because he had a weird night on ketamine and decided Ukraine — or Canada — was asking too much of him.
The post mocking this as “socialist government” cope is a projection from a guy whose entire business model for the last three years has been receiving U.S. government contracts while simultaneously pretending to hate government. Starlink exists because of NASA contracts, Pentagon money, and FAA regulatory favours. Socialism was always inside the house, brother.
THE BIG PICTURE
Canada is building sovereign infrastructure because we watched a man turn satellite internet into a geopolitical weapon and then watched that same man get handed the keys to the American government. That’s not paranoia. That’s pattern recognition.
Carney said it directly: “Satellite communications are now a fundamental requirement for security and strategic autonomy.”
Telesat Lightspeed launching next year isn’t a middle finger to Elon Musk, technically speaking. But if Elon Musk’s burner accounts are this bothered by it, maybe it should be.
🇨🇦 We’re going to space. On our own terms. Without a permission slip from a South African illegal immigrant who vacationed on Epstein Island, who wants to be Emperor of Mars.