Ottawa's Starlink contract balloons to $28.9M even as Carney vows to diversify away from Musk

Politics · By · 2026-11-06 · 4 min read
Starlink satellites crossing the night sky over Poland
Photo: Jakub Hałun / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0) — file photo of Starlink satellites, October 2024, not taken today.

Photo: Starlink satellites passing over Poland in October 2024 — Jakub Hałun / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0). File photo, not taken today.

Mark Carney has been blunt about Elon Musk's satellite network. “Starlink, we will diversify away from, no question,” the prime minister told The New York Times in September. His government has put billions behind a Canadian alternative. And yet Ottawa's own contract with SpaceX — the company behind Starlink — has quietly grown to nearly 13 times its original value. The paperwork tells a different story from the speeches.

Federal contract records show Shared Services Canada's deal with SpaceX Canada Corp. now stands at C$28,941,731, up from C$2.26 million when it was signed in late 2023. That is roughly 12.8 times the original price, for a contract that was supposed to end in October 2025 and now runs to March 31, 2027.

How a $2.26-million deal became a $28.9-million one

The contract was awarded through an advance contract award notice, with a single bid, and covers communications and network services for the federal government. Shared Services Canada runs Ottawa's IT and network infrastructure, and the deal was originally set to run from October 2023 to October 2025.

It did not end there. The record shows at least eight amendments since the signing. The first big jump came in the final quarter of 2025, when the value shot up by C$8.8 million to C$11.06 million and the end date moved to March 31, 2026. Then came the largest single step: an amendment worth C$17.2 million in the January-to-March 2026 reporting period, lifting the total to C$29.39 million. The most recent filing, for the first quarter of the 2026-27 fiscal year, trimmed the total slightly to C$28.94 million and pushed the end date out again, to March 31, 2027.

Here is the honest caveat, and it matters. The disclosure record does not name Starlink, does not say which plans or hardware the money covers, and does not say which departments use the service. SpaceX Canada Corp. is the Canadian subsidiary of the company whose main telecom business is the Starlink satellite network — but the contract itself is listed only as communications and network services. What the record proves is the scale of Ottawa's spending with Musk's company. What exactly it bought is not in the public filing.

The awkward timing for Carney's diversification pitch

The growth of the contract lands at an awkward moment for the government. Carney has made reducing dependence on the United States a defining theme of his prime ministership, and Starlink sits at the centre of that argument. In the same New York Times interview, he pointed to Musk's willingness to restrict Starlink coverage in Ukraine as a warning about relying on a private foreign network for critical communications. Ontario already tore up its own C$100-million Starlink contract in March 2025, during the tariff fight with Washington, and later settled the cancellation on confidential terms.

Ottawa's answer has been to build a Canadian replacement. In August, the government awarded Telesat an initial C$2.3-billion contract for secure military communications through its Lightspeed satellite network, backed by a C$2.14-billion repayable loan. The plan expands the constellation from 156 to 225 satellites, with the first launches expected around the end of this year and military service targeted for 2028.

That is a serious, long-term bet. It is also, for now, a promise about the future. Lightspeed has no satellites in orbit yet, and even the government's own timeline puts service two years away. In the meantime, federal departments still need connectivity in places where fibre has never reached — and the contract record suggests they are still buying it from the company Carney says Canada must leave behind.

What to watch next

Three questions will decide whether this story fades or grows. First, will Shared Services Canada say what the C$28.9 million actually pays for? The department has not explained which services or departments the deal covers. Second, will the contract shrink as Telesat's network comes online, or keep growing through 2027? And third, does the budget Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne tables on Thursday put real money and dates behind the diversification plan — or just repeat the pledge?

Carney's argument was never that walking away from Starlink would be easy. His own words conceded the alternatives are, for now, less capable. But a government that tells Canadians it is diversifying away from Musk while its own contract with his company grows thirteenfold is going to be asked, fairly, which of the two is the real policy. The next disclosure filing will be the first chance to see an answer.

Sources

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