U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra came to Space Canada\u2019s SpaceBound conference in Gatineau last Tuesday with a message for Ottawa, one he delivered many times: Canada is making a mistake by going its own way. By the time the \u201cfireside chat\u201d was over, he had completed his task and inadvertently made the case for Canada\u2019s push for sovereign space capabilities.<\/p>\n
Hoekstra sat down for a fireside chat on space, defence and international collaboration with Beth Burke, chief executive of the Washington-based Canadian American Business Council. Burke opened by inviting him to share some thoughts, and he made three points. The first was the 67 years of space collaboration between the two countries, which he dated to 1959. The second was the U.S. vision for space, from returning to the moon to turning research into business. With the third, Canada\u2019s role, he turned from space to politics. \u201cNow we\u2019re waiting for where Canada wants to go,\u201d he said. \u201c[The] Prime Minister [and the] minister this morning have indicated that Canada maybe sees a different future than what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Industry Minister M\u00e9lanie Joly had opened the day from the same stage at around 8:45 a.m. She said Ottawa would bring the Defence Industrial Strategy\u2019s view of space as a sovereign capability to the Canadian Space Agency, and that on space and telecommunications, \u201cany approach must be about protecting and enhancing our own sovereignty.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCanada wants to go somewhere else. That is a sovereign issue for Canada to decide,\u201d Hoekstra continued. \u201cWe\u2019re talking to people around the world, we\u2019ve got lots of people that want to partner with the United States, that will work with us in space\u2026 If it\u2019s not Canada, the space will be filled. There are some folks out there that bring tremendous capabilities and expertise that are more than eager to partner with the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Hoekstra says \u201cCanada wants to go somewhere else,\u201d he isn\u2019t talking about the moon. Canada has been an all-in Artemis partner for years, and spent money on a Lunar Gateway the U.S. unilaterally shelved<\/a> after politely telling its partners it had changed plans mid-stream. That\u2019s partly why Canada is hedging.<\/p>\n Burke asked how decades of co-operation in orbit could help the two countries through \u201cthe complicated moments\u201d on Earth. Hoekstra spent the next three minutes on tariffs. \u201cFrom our perspective, number one, we\u2019re not in a trade war,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re negotiating some tariffs.\u201d A year and a half ago, he added, Canada \u201chad the best deal in the world. I don\u2019t know whether that\u2019s still in effect.\u201d He moved on to the president\u2019s trip to China and Secretary of State Marco Rubio\u2019s talks with India before Burke cut in: \u201cBack to space.\u201d<\/p>\n I watched the audience while he spoke. People were shaking their heads, and the applause at the end was brief and polite. Afterwards, some of the people I talked to laughed about it. Others said they felt insulted. SpaceQ\u2019s report on the session<\/a> has the full account of what he said.<\/p>\n The SpaceX thread<\/p>\n Burke later asked about national security and how the two countries work together through NORAD and their space agencies. Hoekstra worked through NORAD, NATO spending and Greenland before coming back to space, and to Canada\u2019s plans to do more with the European Space Agency<\/a>. \u201cOkay, that\u2019s fine, great,\u201d he said. Then he started to speak about Elon Musk.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018We\u2019re not gonna rely on SpaceX.\u2019 Actually, you\u2019re closing the market to SpaceX,\u201d he said. \u201cCanada is really saying, for all the investment, all the innovation, all the excellence that is being driven by Elon, we don\u2019t want to be a part of it. I think Elon will probably find other people that he can do business with, and my guess is that he already is.\u201d<\/p>\n As with other statements, Hoekstra didn\u2019t provide much context. It was a \u201chuh\u201d moment. He was most likely referring to what Prime Minister Mark Carney said in September. Asked by Ezra Klein in an interview with The New York Times<\/a> how Canada balances its dependence on technologies like Starlink, Carney answered: \u201cStarlink we will diversify away from, no question.\u201d He named Telesat\u2019s Lightspeed constellation<\/a> as the alternative, a way to \u201ccut that dependency, which has in certain circumstances been turned on and off in a way that was not sovereign to the actors in the conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what Hoekstra didn\u2019t mention, and may not know, given how thin his grasp of the space sector seemed.<\/p>\n Starlink is still sold across Canada, and WestJet uses it. And the constellation Carney named as the alternative is itself a SpaceX customer. Telesat booked 14 Falcon 9 launches<\/a> for Lightspeed in 2023. When its 225 satellites reach orbit, SpaceX will have launched more Canadian satellites than all the Canadian satellites that came before them, active and retired, combined.<\/p>\n Starlink\u2019s biggest business is home broadband; SpaceX counted 13.6 million consumer subscribers<\/a> at the end of September. Telesat doesn\u2019t sell to consumers at all. Lightspeed will be a fraction of Starlink\u2019s size, built for airlines, ships, telecom carriers, governments and, now, defence. Carney\u2019s alternative competes less with Starlink than with Starshield<\/a>, the secure military version of Starlink that SpaceX provides to the U.S. government.<\/p>\n Telesat has been working toward its low Earth orbit constellation for about a decade, long before sovereignty became Ottawa\u2019s latest buzzword. Its first filing with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, in 2016, said the constellation could serve government and military users<\/a>, and by 2020 Telesat was running exercises with the U.S. Air Force<\/a>. Canada\u2019s defence money came later. In March, Telesat set aside a quarter of Lightspeed\u2019s capacity<\/a> for military Ka-band, radio frequencies reserved for armed forces. In August, the Defence Investment Agency awarded it a contract initially worth $2.3 billion<\/a> to carry secure military communications across the Arctic. That program has been in the works in one form or another for well over 10 years. Its second phase, a separate medium Earth orbit constellation with MDA Space as prime contractor and Telesat as a subcontractor, is in contract talks.<\/p>\n Asked for his advice to the industry, Hoekstra said: \u201cI know that there are some countries that are going to be working on replicating and building the capability that already exists, and it\u2019s kind of like, great, go for it, okay? You know, you\u2019ve got people that have done that. They can come in and they can build it for you and you\u2019ll be all set up.\u201d<\/p>\n He made that offer a week after Ukraine learned what it means when someone else owns the capability.<\/p>\n Starshield, Musk and trust<\/p>\n Ukrainian forces lost speed on their Starlink and Starshield terminals around Oct. 13 and 14, with no warning, and drone missions failed, according to Ukrainian officials<\/a>. On Oct. 14, Musk posted that Starshield systems \u201care owned and controlled by the US government,\u201d and that \u201cany limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.\u201d<\/p>\n The Wall Street Journal then reported<\/a> that Musk ordered the slowdown himself. In Mumbai on Oct. 21, Rubio told reporters, \u201cI\u2019m not aware that we knew about this decision beforehand. But that\u2019s irrelevant,\u201d adding that it was governed by \u201ca private commercial contract,\u201d Reuters reported<\/a>. On Oct. 24, as speeds were restored, Musk offered a different explanation. \u201cUkraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people,\u201d he wrote<\/a>. \u201cThat loophole was closed last week.\u201d<\/p>\n Whatever the terms of service say, Musk slowed a military service Ukraine depended on in the middle of a war. Washington says it didn\u2019t know. That one private citizen could make that call on his own is ridiculous. In defence, trust is paramount, and Musk broke it.<\/p>\n