this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2025

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Ontario's severed ties with Starlink impedes access to legal services in remote First Nations (www.cbc.ca)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/canada

15 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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."

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago

Maybe I'm missing something, but he ripped up a contract that was just recently signed. This seems to be related to existing contracts that are separate from the 100m contract.

It's tough to balance the worth for me on this one. Should we expect these communities to have to rely on internet when they are clearly so broken off, or should we be providing these services as infrastructure as a country through installation of cables to connect them (which would likely admittedly be tough with the distances through bushes).

I'd argue the best option is to continue funding this service separately, just to keep the users up north online for their court visits, while working on establishing our own service. I'd prefer if we didn't have to litter the skies with satellites for our solution as well, I don't like the amount of space junk above us currently.

At which point that would require funding from our government, and it looks like regardless of who gets in, we're going into austerity measures, so I won't be holding breath that our R&D goes into this service.

Tough one and unfortunately it looks like the north is going to be underserved. Which, also unfortunately, with the number of voters/people up there, is likely to continue as I doubt this will be a focus on people's voting decisions. Especially not 4 years from now when we have another provincial election.

[–] UnderFreyja 23 points 2 days ago

It's shit but it was also really bad that they had to use that. We need our own infrastructure for stuff like this.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 day ago (3 children)

This is what I was talking about the other day, but the regressives just mass downvoted and claimed I was some kind of Trump lover. You can't just get rid of excellent technologies just because you're emotional about who runs the company.

You can't just yell and cry at Tesla dealerships, block roads or harass citizens because of whatever political justification you've got in your head. That's selfish and serves only to vindicate your personal feelings while holding back progress.

A more viable solution would have been to let Starlink build the infrastructure and then lobby for a Canadian telecommunications company to buy them out once they have the means to maintain and expand that infrastructure.

[–] Jason2357 2 points 3 hours ago

Your last paragraph makes it sound like you don’t understand what starlink is. Your middle paragraph is just wrong - peaceful protest is legal in Canada, and your paragraph doesn’t distinguish from unlawful activities like property damage. Finally, your first paragraph - I would 100% be behind you if they were talking about banning you from privately purchasing a starlink kit. This isn’t that. This is a huge public works investment, so there are many options available, and they have to consider things you don’t consider as a simple customer.

[–] Dearche 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Starlink isn't the only satellite phones and internet available in Canada, not to mention all the alternatives you could get.

For example, how about cell towers? If the government paid for them, then no individual company can monopolize them, so anybody could get access to their use.

Not to mention that Spain's setting up their own satellite internet services as well Starlink style, so why pay the Trumpist when we can pay an actual ally that hasn't blatantly betrayed all their alliances and agreements?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

There is no Canadian alternative that can provide a service like Starlink. I live in a rural area, and they're literally the only way I can get a reliable internet connection. I've tried Xplornet and Mobile Broadband, neither can provide a reliable connection, or are have prohibitive bandwidth caps.

I'm not even that far from Toronto, I'm technically still in the GTA. There are no cell towers nearby due to the community protesting against them going up. I'm lucky to get a single bar on a clear day.

I'm all for using a Canadian alternative, but there just isn't one for a lot of people.

[–] Dearche 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

What about wired, if you're in the GTA? I remember a few years back Bell offered free hookup if you signed up for Fibe. Don't know if they still do it, or what sort of restrictions there are, but it seemed to be a blanket offer at the time.

In the first place, this is an issue for legal cases, and I think that the province providing a temporary connection to those who need virtual court services makes more sense than giving Musk 100 million to give everybody permanent internet. This doesn't stop anybody who has no viable alternatives for day-to-day use from using Starlink, just that I think it's not the province's business spending so much money for a small selection's decisions. The cities already massively subsidize rural Canadians, so I can't help but feel like this is a poor way to give a much needed service to those in need.

We don't need to give all rural Canadians free internet at a cost of 1.5% of the entire provincial budget.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

Wired isn't an option. ISP's no longer 56k service over phone, nor Broadband DSL.

Fibre requires a main trunk line nearby, which are typically routed through cell towers. No cell tower, no fibre or cable service.

[+] [email protected] -6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Starlink offers the low latency that others can't provide which is needed for more real time applications and at a much more affordable rate. Maybe in the future there will be another (edit: low latency) network that rural people can rely on, but that isn't today, or tomorrow, or next year, or the year after.

[–] Dearche 5 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

More affordable for high use, sure, but this article is speaking about for emergency use, which means that you'll almost never use it. Besides, the smallest version of Starlink still requires you to carry a laptop sized satellite antennae, compared to internet phone which is literally just a mobile phone the size of some of the early bar phones. One you can carry in your pocket at all times, the other useless unless if you're with your car at minimum along with any other devices needed to make it work.

Besides that, latency matters for shit in this case anyways.

The only use for Starlink that isn't serviced by more traditional means is high speed high bandwidth internet, but it doesn't make any sense why the province should give Adolf Musk any money to do so, let alone a tenth of a billion. People who want that service can pay for it themselves while the province can provide something more suited for lower level or emergency use that costs only a fraction the price and doesn't require signing with an overgrown child that manically laughs as he helps put his own country into the toilet.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

Where are you going on about emergency use? The article is talking about how this is going to impact northern first nations communities who were going to use the service for virtual court appearances which require good bandwidth and low latency.

[–] Dearche 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

My bad. I guess I mixed this up with something else.

Even still, the bandwidth and latency of traditional satellite internet isn't bad enough to be an issue for this. You can still stream with latency below 1s, more than enough for streaming, just not good enough for online games.

Besides, Xplore is a Canadian provider that does this already to service these areas specifically. Why go for a foreign provider when we have a perfectly serviceable local one for such a purpose? Yes, it's not a great provider, but for this use case, it is good enough and doesn't require giving a hundred million to a guy who's helping to destroy this country.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Traditional geostationary satellite latency really causes problems with real time communication which this is trying to help with. You end up in a situation where you talk over each other frequently unless you go into radio style communication of always waiting for the other person to clearly be done talking with a long pause which hampers fluid conversations. Reactions to things you hear or say become delayed making for a jarring experience.

You can do it yes, but it's subpar.

Edit: Imagine a lawyer not being able to interject properly during a court case or read non verbal queues of whats going on in court in real time.

[–] seestheday 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Do we know if it is even possible for another company to take over starlink infrastructure ? These are satellites. It’s not like they’re cables in the ground.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Satellites that have to communicate with a ground station, unless they want to do all the traffic in a region over the laser links, but those links will have their own limitations.

I'm not sure what the ground infrastructure is specifically, is it spacex hardware that connects to local ISP stuff or is it their own ground based infrastructure. That ground infrastructure is usually what part of getting approved in a country involves. Doing only laser links for a whole country would be too much. (Edit: I mean it'd technically be doable, but it'd greatly reduce their network bandwidth vs having a closer ground station, so fewer users and lower speeds)

The other option would be a hybrid situation where starlink backhauls one of our telecos internet but the local infrastructure is built and owned by them. In the future you could then backhaul with another satellite network in theory. Basically drop a 4g/5g tower in the middle of nowhere and connect it to Starlink.