US Ambassador Says Canada Chose to Close Its Market to SpaceX

The US ambassador to Canada says Ottawa has made “a conscious decision” to move away from SpaceX, and that Elon Musk will probably find other people to do business with. Pete Hoekstra made the comments on October 20 at Space Canada’s SpaceBound conference in Gatineau, Quebec, a few weeks after Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada would reduce its reliance on SpaceX’s Starlink network.

Speaking on stage with Beth Burke, president and CEO of the Canadian American Business Council, Hoekstra described Canada’s position as “We’re not gonna rely on SpaceX … or actually you’re closing the market to SpaceX,” according to a report from the conference (via SpaceQ).

“You’ve made it a conscious decision that you’ve said we’re gonna move away from SpaceX, it’s kind of like, ‘Okay, great.’ That’s helpful for us as a government,” he said. In his view, Canada was effectively saying that “for all the investment, all the innovation, all the excellence that is being driven by Elon, we don’t want to be a part of it.” He added, “I think Elon will probably find other people that he can do business with, and my guess is that he already is.”

A shorter version of the same exchange appears in The Globe and Mail, which quoted him as saying, “Okay. That’s fine. I think Elon will find other people he can do business with.” The ambassador also said the White House is planning “in accordance with what a sovereign nation decides it’s going to do with its economic and national security future,” and that senior leadership “fundamentally believes that this partnership has been so successful, and will continue to do so.” Neither report has him naming a specific federal rule or contract that keeps SpaceX out of Canada, and SpaceQ noted he was not clear on what he meant by closing the market.

On X, Hoekstra wrote that he spoke at the conference about “the huge opportunity space exploration presents,” calling it “a competitive market that the United States will continue to move aggressively in.”

Ambassador Pete Hoekstra (@USAmbCanada) October 20, 2026

Ottawa’s own case for its satellite plans rests on sovereignty. When the Defence Investment Agency awarded Telesat an initial contract worth about C$2.3 billion on August 4 for military satellite communications in the Arctic, Minister of National Defence David McGuinty said the project gives the Canadian Armed Forces “secure, resilient, and reliable connectivity in the Arctic and other high-latitude regions where they need it most,” and that the government is “defending Canada’s sovereignty and security.” The government’s announcement does not mention SpaceX or Starlink.

Carney explained his reasoning in a September interview with The New York Times. “Starlink, we will diversify away from, no question,” he said, according to the published transcript. He pointed to Telesat’s low Earth orbit network and said that by pooling with partners, “Europeans, Koreans potentially,” Canada could “cut 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.” He didn’t name the conflict. We covered those remarks in our story on Carney’s plan to diversify away from Starlink.

Telesat CEO Dan Goldberg said in August that the contract “ensures the Canadian Armed Forces will have access to secure, resilient and sovereign connectivity years earlier than originally planned.” As of Wednesday morning, we hadn’t found a public response to Hoekstra’s remarks from the Prime Minister’s Office or National Defence, and SpaceX and Musk haven’t commented publicly on them either.

Under the August deal, Telesat will add 69 satellites to its Lightspeed constellation, taking it from 156 to 225, all built by MDA Space in Montreal. The contract also carries two option periods worth about $214 million and $218 million, and Telesat says service under it begins in 2028, with global Lightspeed service expected in the first quarter of that year. The contract covers Arctic military capacity, not consumer internet.

SpaceX still has a role in that network. Telesat’s announcement says the 69 new satellites will be “launched by SpaceX on already-secured Falcon 9 rockets,” plus one more Falcon 9 that still depends on a final launch agreement, which we noted when SpaceX was picked to launch satellites for the Arctic defense deal.

Starlink itself is still sold across Canada, and provinces have taken different paths with it. Alberta’s Satellite Rebate Program pays rural households up to $1,000 toward satellite hardware, and Starlink is currently the only kit that qualifies. Ontario went the other way in March 2025, when Premier Doug Ford’s government cancelled a $100 million Starlink contract over US tariffs, while Quebec awarded a Starlink contract for remote courthouses that spring, saying it had found no equivalent alternative.

Do you think Canada is right to build its own satellite capacity, or should Ottawa keep working closely with SpaceX?