Ontario, Canada’s second-largest province, has made some bold decisions, following the recent tariff plans announced by US President Donald Trump. As these new decisions surfaced, Ontario Premier Doug Ford joined this protest and announced the cancellation of the $100 million Starlink contract that was signed with Elon Musk in November 2024 for the well-being of Canada.
In November 2024, the Ontario government signed a 100 million Canadian dollar contract with Elon Musk’s company SpaceX, which runs the Starlink satellite internet service, to deliver high-speed internet to those people who live in remote areas of rural and northern Ontario. This deal was signed to cover this high-speed internet access to 15,000 eligible homes and businesses in rural and remote areas by June 2025.
The work has already been started according to the plan, and the latest Ontario Satellite Internet project is part of this contract only. The provincial government has invested approximately $4 billion to initiate the process of bringing high-speed internet to the decided locations.
Ontario Minister of Infrastructure Kinga Surma once stated, “What the province will be doing is we will be paying for the installation and equipment fees.” The plan was to make it accessible for the homes and businesses that qualify for the service to register for it from Spring 2025, but before the entire process took a proper form, Doug Ford scrapped this contract.
At the beginning of February 2025, Trump announced that the US government was imposing tariffs on all Canadian imports, except for oil. This rule was imposed on February 1. The president has shown multiple reasons for enforcing this tax on Canadian goods, and even a meeting between Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau didn’t bring any solution.
A protest from the Canadian government was expected, and it even came. Trudeau announced his counter-tariff law of 25 percent tariffs on American imports such as paper products, beverages, and cosmetics worth over US$20 billion if the US sticks to its plans.
While Elon Musk wasn’t directly involved in all these, he’s one of Trump's closest allies. So, the protest eventually affected Ford’s contract with Musk’s Starlink. He tweeted, “US-based businesses will now lose out on tens of billions of dollars in new revenues. They only have President Trump to blame. We're going one step further. We'll be ripping up the province's contract with Starlink.”
This cancellation of the Starlink contract came as part of a broader move by Ontario to cancel all government contracts with US companies. However, this scrapping the deal program is currently on hold as Trump agreed to delay the tax imposed on Canadian products by 30 days after Canada promised to tighten the security along the border.
Anyway, the Ontario premier has confirmed that Ford won’t take time to rip up the contract if the US proceeds with its plans. In this entire scenario, Musk was completely unmoved and shared no reaction or explanation.