By Sarah Smellie More than half of Canada’s provincial and territorial governments buy critical internet and emergency communications services from Starlink — a satellite constellation owned by billionaire Elon Musk. And with Musk now acting as a top adviser to a U.S. president who has repeatedly threatened to annex Canada, one researcher sees that reliance as a threat to Canadian sovereignty. Dwayne Winseck, a professor of journalism and communications at Carleton University who has studied Starlink’s emergence as the sixth-largest internet service provider in Canada as of 2023, says Canadian governments must do the “maximum possible” to disentangle themselves from Starlink. “Cutting contracts is one approach,” he said in a recent interview. “There are also some made-in-Canada alternatives that can be accelerated.” From a $200,000-per-year agreement with Newfoundland and Labrador’s…
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