Liberals believe a Canadian is a Canadian, but not Elon Musk

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A Canadian, is a Canadian, is a Canadian, Justin Trudeau famously said. And while Trudeau’s Liberals are happy to apply that standard to terrorists who want to attack Canada, it obviously doesn’t apply to successful Canadians who disagree with the Trudeau government.

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Top Liberals are taking shots at Elon Musk, a man who has carried a Canadian passport, all to try and score cheap political points at home.

Trudeau’s industry minister, Francois-Philippe Champagne, called Musk a “foreign billionaire.” Supriya Dwivedi, a top comms advisor in Trudeau’s office, accused the Conservatives of “simping for foreign billionaires over thousands of jobs in Quebec” for pointing out a basic fact.

Best to back up here.

This all comes down to a major announcement on Friday, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a $2.14 billion loan to Telesat, a Canadian satellite company. The money given to this publicly traded company is to support their low-Earth-orbit satellite program known as Lightspeed.

“Designed, manufactured, and operated in Canada, the Telesat Lightspeed satellite network will be the largest in Canadian history – creating thousands of jobs, growing our economy, and getting high-speed Internet to Canadians,” Trudeau said at the announcement.

“How much would it cost to provide Starlink to every Canadian household that doesn’t have high speed?” Conservative MP Michael Barrett asked.

“Less than half that amount,” Musk replied.

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That’s all it took for top Liberals from Champagne, to Diweldi, to Chrystia Freeland’s chief of staff and others to attack the Conservatives and anyone noting that Elon Musk’s Starlink is far cheaper as being against Quebec jobs.

Should we just build everything in Quebec at double the price then?

Realizing that making this argument was a bad look, the Liberals later switched to saying the Conservatives wanted to hand over Canada’s defence satellite capability to Musk. Of course, no one made that argument, and the government’s main selling point was that this investment would bring high-speed internet to rural and remote areas for homes and businesses.

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It’s not the first time they’ve invested in Telesat, a former Crown corporation that was privatized by the Chretien Liberals in the 1990s and went public in November 2021. Shortly before Telesat began trading on the Nasdaq, the Trudeau government gave Telesat $1.4 billion, $790 million as a repayable loan and $650 million treated as a preferred share equity investment.

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The promise at the time was that Telesat Lightspeed would be, “connecting approximately 40,000 households in rural and remote regions.” That isn’t exactly happening, not directly.

Here’s the real problem: Starlink, operated by Musk, already had more than 400,000 customers in Canada, according to a National Post report earlier this year.

Basically, Musk’s Starlink is thumping Telesat in its own backyard.

This is the aspect — servicing remote areas — of Lightspeed’s capabilities that Trudeau played up during Friday’s announcement, not national defence. Even at that, Lightspeed is primarily a commercial project, not a military one, so Trudeau is effectively investing taxpayer money in a commercial operation.

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They are now trying to play the patriotism card – I thought patriotism was always bad to progressives – in claiming Telesat is a Canadian company. It is headquartered in Ottawa, but its major shareholders are based in New York and Chicago.

Telesat started in 1969, it has a storied history and has launched satellites that have connected the globe. Starlink only started launching satellites in 2018, more than two years after Lightspeed conceived using similar technology.

There are currently about 200 low-orbit satellites operated by Telesat and more than 6,000 operated by Starlink. Is it any wonder that more Canadians are turning to Starlink than to the products backed up by Telesat for home or business internet?

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Oh, and as Telesat looks to launch more satellites in the coming years to improve service, it looks like they will be “simping” and “giving money to foreign billionaires.” Telesat has signed a contract with SpaceX, the parent company of Starlink which is also owned by Musk, to start launching their new satellites in 2026.

There is a solid argument for Canada investing in defence satellites and ensuring we have sovereign access. Investing in a commercial operation owned by American hedge funds and whose stock has plummeted since launching three years ago is something open for debate.

Not that Trudeau’s Liberals believe in open and honest debate these days.

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