The premier of Ontario on Monday said he’s shredding the $68 million contract between the Canadian province and Elon Musk’s Starlink in response to tariffs enacted by U.S. President Trump.
“We’ll be ripping up the province’s contract with Starlink. Ontario won’t do business with people hellbent on destroying our economy,” Ford said. “President Trump is the only person to be blamed. Maybe Elon Musk can call his buddy? This is one of the ramifications.”
The contract, signed in November for $100 million Canadian (about $68 million U.S.), would have brought high-speed internet to residents in the remote reaches of rural and northern Ontario.
In addition to voiding the contract, Ford said the province won’t use American companies for any construction at all, be it a hospital or a doghouse, until the tariffs Trump announced Saturday are removed.
“I don’t care if it’s a toothpick,” the premier said at a news conference. “We need to purchase from Canada and Ontario.”
Ford also slammed the damage that Trump’s tariffs will do to the president’s own constituents.
“This is a tax on American citizens,” Ford said. “That’s what Donald Trump is doing to his own people.”
Trump’s team appears bent on destroying “families’ incomes, destroy businesses,” Ford added. “He wants to take food off the table of hard-working people, and I’m not going to tolerate it.”
The premier’s comments came in response to the 25% tariffs Trump imposed, starting Tuesday, on just about all goods from Canada, with a 10% tariff on the country’s energy products.
U.S.-made liquor was already being pulled from Canadian shelves in several provinces, including Ontario, before this announcement. Ford noted that the Liquor Control Board of Ontario does about $1 billion in sales in American wine, beer, spirits and seltzers and said on Sunday that all those products would disappear come Tuesday.
“As the only wholesaler of alcohol in the province, LCBO will also remove American products from its catalogue so other Ontario-based restaurants and retailers can’t order or restock U.S. products,” he added in a statement on X.
Fellow politicians approved of the rupture, some saying the deal should never have been made, CBC News reported.
Trump sparked a trade war between allies Canada and Mexico, imposing tariffs that he said put “America first,” even though the move promises to raise prices in the States. Mexico on Monday succeeded in holding off the tariffs for a month by agreeing to send 10,000 troops to the U.S. border to assist in curtailing immigration and drug trafficking.
With News Wire Services
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