Ford Government Won’t Reveal Cost of Cancelling $100M Starlink Deal as Public Accounts Show Rural Broadband Hit

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Ontario’s abandoned Starlink agreement is back under scrutiny, more than a year after the province formally walked away from the $100-million satellite-internet contract. The immediate question is simple but still unanswered: how much did taxpayers pay to cancel it?

The issue resurfaced as Ontario released its 2025-26 Public Accounts and Treasury Board President Kinga Surma acknowledged that challenges created by cancelling the Starlink agreement contributed to lower broadband spending. The province has said the negotiated termination payment was significantly below the contract’s original value, but the exact amount remains confidential. Meanwhile, Ontario’s deadline for bringing high-speed internet to every community has moved from the end of 2025 to 2028, leaving the financial consequences and the practical impact of the decision intertwined.

Ontario Still Won’t Say What It Paid to Get Out

The most basic financial detail remains unavailable. On September 24, 2026, Surma was repeatedly asked how much Ontario paid to terminate its agreement with SpaceX’s Starlink. She declined to provide a figure and directed detailed questions to the current infrastructure minister. The province has previously characterized the payment as a negotiated settlement that was “significantly less” than the planned $100-million value of the contract.

That means Ontarians know there was a cost, but not its size. The secrecy is not new. When the agreement was formally cancelled in July 2025, Energy and Mines Minister Stephen Lecce confirmed that Ontario had ended the contract but would not disclose the termination fee. By March 2026, the government said the settlement terms were confidential. Surma has since defended the broader cancellation decision, saying it was a major issue during the provincial election and that the government continues to move ahead with its broadband strategy.

The Original Deal Was Supposed to Reach 15,000 Hard-to-Connect Locations

Ontario announced the Ontario Satellite Internet, or ONSAT, program in November 2024. Starlink won a competitive procurement process to provide satellite internet to 15,000 eligible unserved or underserved homes and businesses, particularly in rural, remote and northern areas where conventional fibre or fixed-wireless networks were difficult to build. Service was originally expected to begin in June 2025.

The contract was one piece of Ontario’s much larger broadband strategy. At the time, the province said it was investing nearly $4 billion to bring reliable high-speed internet to every community by the end of 2025. The Starlink program was designed specifically to address the difficult final portion of that task: properties where geography, distance and low population density make terrestrial networks unusually expensive. Infrastructure Ontario said the service was expected to meet the 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload standard used for high-speed broadband programs. That made satellite technology a targeted solution rather than a replacement for the province’s broader fibre buildout.

The U.S. Tariff Fight Changed the Political Calculation

The agreement became entangled with the Canada-U.S. trade dispute in early 2025. Premier Doug Ford announced that Ontario would cancel the Starlink contract as part of the province’s response to tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump. Ontario also pursued other retaliatory measures, including restrictions affecting U.S. procurement and, for a period, a surcharge on electricity exports to several American states.

Ford made clear that he viewed the Starlink decision as part of that wider dispute. In March 2025, he said the province would not return to the agreement even if tariff tensions eased. The cancellation was aimed at a company controlled by Elon Musk, who at the time had close ties to the Trump administration. Ontario eventually finalized the termination in July 2025. Reuters reported that the government was following through on its pledge to sever the C$100-million agreement in response to U.S. trade measures. What began as a telecommunications procurement had therefore become part of Ontario’s cross-border economic response.

Cancelling the Contract Was More Complicated Than Simply Walking Away

Ontario’s initial rhetoric suggested a straightforward cancellation, but ending a signed government contract required negotiations. By July 2025, the province had reached an agreement with SpaceX that included a termination payment. Officials did not disclose the amount then, and subsequent reporting established that the settlement would remain confidential. The government has maintained only that the payout was substantially below the contract’s full $100-million value.

That distinction matters because the $100 million was the value of the original service agreement, not necessarily the amount ultimately spent. Ontario did not proceed with the planned rollout to 15,000 premises, while the termination created a separate financial obligation whose size remains unknown publicly. In March 2026, Ford said he did not know the exact payment when questioned and indicated that he would seek the figure; his office later said it could not be released because of the confidential settlement. The result is an unusual accounting question: the province can describe the cancelled program and its consequences without publicly stating the precise price of cancelling it.

Broadband Spending Fell Well Below What Had Been Planned

The financial picture makes the Starlink dispute more significant than a single cancelled contract. Ontario’s 2025-26 estimates had provided approximately $1.72 billion for broadband capital expenses. The Financial Accountability Office later identified broadband capital spending as one of the largest areas of lower-than-planned provincial expenditure, reporting a $1.306-billion decrease in the Broadband Capital Expense vote for 2025-26.

The FAO also reported that $687 million associated with broadband and cellular infrastructure was transferred to the province’s Contingency Fund during the fourth quarter. Those figures encompass Ontario’s wider broadband program and therefore should not be treated as the cost of cancelling Starlink. Surma, however, directly connected at least some of the slower spending to the decision. She said on September 24 that Ontario had spent less on the broadband initiative because it encountered challenges after cancelling the contract. That is the clearest official acknowledgment so far that the cancellation had consequences extending beyond the undisclosed settlement payment itself.

The Province’s 2025 Connectivity Deadline Has Slipped to 2028

The most visible consequence for residents is the timetable. Ontario spent years promising access to reliable high-speed internet in every community by the end of 2025. That target appeared repeatedly in government announcements, including when the Starlink contract was awarded. The province has since moved the completion date to the end of 2028.

Reporting in late 2025 identified the Starlink cancellation as one reason for the delay, alongside construction problems affecting terrestrial broadband projects. A government source told Global News at the time that officials had not found a feasible immediate substitute capable of taking over the specific satellite role Starlink was expected to fill. Fibre deployment in remote terrain was also facing practical setbacks. Ontario’s own current broadband information now says more than 96 per cent of residents have access to high-speed internet and that the province remains committed to reaching all homes and businesses by 2028. The overwhelming majority may already be connected, but the remaining properties are often precisely the ones that are hardest and costliest to serve.

The Remaining Broadband Gap Is Different From the Easier Part of the Rollout

Ontario has not abandoned its broadband program. The province says nearly $4 billion is being invested across fibre, fixed wireless and other connectivity technologies, and more than 240,000 kilometres of fibre have been installed since 2021. Projects include the Accelerated High-Speed Internet Program, federal-provincial initiatives, northern projects and the Matawa broadband initiative serving remote First Nations communities.

The difficulty is that the final unserved areas are not distributed evenly. Rural and remote communities often have fewer potential customers spread across larger distances, while northern terrain can make conventional construction slower and more expensive. Ontario’s own ministry planning documents describe significant capital barriers to expanding private broadband networks into these areas. Satellite service was selected for ONSAT precisely because some locations were considered unsuitable for fibre or fixed wireless. That context helps explain why cancelling a program intended for only 15,000 premises could still complicate a province-wide target covering millions of people: those 15,000 represented some of the locations for which ordinary network construction offered the fewest practical options.

Public Accounts Add Numbers, but the Biggest Starlink Number Is Still Missing

Ontario’s Public Accounts are designed to compare what the province actually spent with what had been planned. The 2025-26 accounts released September 24 contain Ontario’s final audited financial results for the year ended March 31, 2026. Overall program spending reached $220.9 billion, up $10 billion from the previous year, while the province recorded a $13-billion deficit. The government also reported that infrastructure investment increased overall, showing why the broadband shortfall needs to be viewed as a program-specific issue rather than evidence of a province-wide infrastructure spending decline.

What the financial documents cannot answer is the question dominating the Starlink controversy: the exact termination payment negotiated with SpaceX. Public Accounts can show how much ministries and programs spent, while the FAO can identify large differences from budget plans, but the government continues to rely on the confidentiality of its settlement when asked for the cancellation figure. Ontario is now pursuing its broadband goal without Starlink and says every community remains on track for access by 2028. Until the settlement amount is disclosed, however, the full financial comparison between cancelling the original deal and replacing its intended service cannot be made from public information alone.

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