Indigenous legal advocates in northwestern Ontario are sounding the alarm over the Ontario government’s cancellation of its contract with Starlink, citing concerns with people’s access to legal services in remote First Nations.
Last month, Premier Doug Ford announced he’d be ripping up the $100-million deal with Elon Musk’s internet provider, as a retaliatory measure in the ongoing Canada-U.S. trade war.
But in northwestern Ontario, this means the end of the Starlink-Navigator Program delivered by Nishnawbe-Aski Legal Services Corporation (NALSC), which “permitted community members, who often do not have access to internet, or reliable internet, an opportunity to participate in virtual courts.”
I feel badly for remote communities that were looking forward to these services, but Starlink is a security threat directly connected to a hostile nation that has been making overt threats to Canada. Moreover, we have already seen Musk will direct the company to turn off access to people he doesn’t like. There would have been nothing stopping Musk (his lackeys) from eavesdropping on communications and then cutting it off when he felt like it.
The only real way is to invest in other providers, preferably Canadian, preferably public, but most fundamentally anyone that’s not MAGA.