I went to Nova Scotia to find the new Canadian spaceport
Episode Stats
Harmful content
Toxicity
2
sentences flagged
Hate speech
2
sentences flagged
Summary
In order to get into outer space, Canada needs a spaceport. But there's no spaceport in Nova Scotia, Canada. There's just a slab of concrete on a bit of a field of gravel. And it's not a real place.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
tonight i'm in small town nova scotia to look for this liberal government spaceport
00:00:21.140
it's april 24th this is the ezra levant show
0.89
00:00:38.440
From a fully interconnected system, from Yellowknife to Trenton, to ships and submarines at sea,
0.99
00:00:46.800
and to fighter jets in the air, Canada needs its own space capability.
00:00:51.860
But it's not only satellites that are critical to the defense and security of Canadians.
00:01:00.680
It's why we're taking steps to strengthen our space capabilities
00:01:04.100
so that we can launch from right here on Canadian soil.
00:01:09.640
Simply put, every investment we make in space today
00:01:12.940
and every technology that we develop is an investment in our economy,
00:01:23.780
That's why I'm thrilled to announce that the Department of National Defence
00:01:27.760
has signed a 10-year, $200 million agreement with Maritime Launch Services.
00:01:38.800
this agreement will support the construction of a launch pad
00:01:44.720
the Canadian Armed Forces, and the wider Government of Canada.
00:01:48.380
Maritime Launch Services will build this spaceport facility at a site near Canso, Nova Scotia.
00:01:56.380
It's an ideal location for operating safely and efficiently thanks to its natural geography and proximity to the open ocean.
00:02:06.380
Under this agreement, Maritime Launch Services must spend 90% of the $200 million here in Canada,
00:02:15.380
which means $180 million is going back to Canadian businesses.
00:02:21.060
This investment not only supports our national defence,
00:02:24.920
it will create high-value jobs and contribute to the Nova Scotia economy.
00:02:34.880
We flew to Halifax and then drove three hours here
00:02:38.440
and we came because of a picture, a picture of a port.
00:02:42.940
Not a seaport, but of a proposed spaceport being built in tiny Canso, Nova Scotia.
00:02:50.620
And this spaceport recently got a $200 million contract from Canada's Department of Defense.
00:02:59.240
In the form of a 10-year lease, Canada's military is spending $200 million leasing this spaceport.
00:03:09.340
it's just a slab of concrete on a bit of a field of gravel there is no spaceport but there is a
00:03:17.180
200 million dollar lease over 10 years that's 20 million dollars a year works out to 54 000 a day
00:03:25.280
for an empty plot of land for the company marine launch services that they actually rent from the
00:03:31.300
province for less than 15 grand a year it's the craziest thing i've seen a 200 million dollar
00:03:37.220
military lease for a spaceport that doesn't have anything on it but some concrete slab?
00:03:44.860
We had to come out to investigate. And as we were making the journey, we studied more of what we saw
00:03:51.340
and all the irregularities, how this company, Marine Launch Services, was basically a penny
00:03:58.100
stock until this massive financing came in, in which the holders of the stock instantly became
00:04:05.680
millionaires. The stock price jumped from a few pennies to 70 cents as all that government cash
00:04:13.460
came in. Who were the people who profited? And more to the point, is there any spaceport at all?
00:04:21.320
The Marine Launch Services has had this spaceport for years, but there's only been two launches,
00:04:29.000
and they're not into outer space. They're more like toy rockets. In fact, the first one was by
00:04:35.660
some students at york university whose rocket was a meter and a half high it's the kind of thing
00:04:41.720
that kids would play at it's not a real place and unlike say elon musk's space x or nasa there's no
00:04:51.060
infrastructure there there's no buildings at all we were unable to get to the slab we'll try another
00:04:57.360
day i'm sure but there's simply nothing there the idea which is so bizarre i've never heard of it
00:05:03.160
before, is that companies that want to launch a rocket will bring their rocket to Canso, Nova
00:05:10.040
Scotia, and launch it from this slab. So they're not going to build any rockets here. They're not
00:05:15.800
going to house any rockets here. U-B-Y-O-R, bring your own rocket to Canso. Needless to say, the
00:05:24.680
local people here sense a scam afoot. And they also have questions, for example, environmentalists,
00:05:30.620
will this damage the fisheries safety there are houses within just a couple of kilometers of this
00:05:36.340
spaceport i suppose on the one hand the fact that it's so obviously a scam that will never actually
00:05:41.840
shoot anything into outer space is a relief but the whole thing is so bizarre we simply had to
00:05:47.440
check it out we were motivated largely by a deeply researched piece on this spaceport not by a regime
00:05:56.080
journalist at CBC or CTV, but by a citizen journalist who simply started to document
00:06:02.320
the crazy things she saw and heard and what she found online about this very strange company,
00:06:09.540
Marine Launch Services, that started off as a Ukrainian space project that would have a
00:06:15.900
Ukrainian-made rocket, abandoned that idea, and is now a spaceport in Kanso.
00:06:23.540
Follow me as we talk to Marie Lumsden, the author of that article.
00:06:36.120
A few hours, about three hours' drive from Halifax.
00:06:38.240
This is the hometown of Stan Rogers and his family.
00:06:44.720
He was a great songwriter and really had the culture of Nova Scotia.
00:06:48.560
And just looking around, it couldn't be more beautiful.
00:06:51.300
Oh, I ache with nostalgia for a place I've never been before.
00:06:56.060
But I'm worried about this place because I just read an article in the Halifax Examiner,
00:07:01.660
which is a left-of-center publication, but I read an article that was so meticulously
00:07:07.320
I came out here with my videographer, Lincoln Jay, because just down there, amidst all the
00:07:12.720
beauty, is this cockamamie scheme, and I'm going to call it a scheme, to build a spaceport
00:07:21.080
you heard it right a spaceport and the government of canada just signed a 200 million dollar lease
00:07:30.620
for an empty plot of land there and they say they're going to rival space x i'm talking with
00:07:37.920
marie lumsden who wrote the article in the halifax examiner it was meticulously researched it was
00:07:46.040
enough that we got up and flew and drove all the way here that was very powerful tell us a little
00:07:51.620
bit about this spaceport that you've been studying so in 2019 uh we found out that this project
00:07:59.100
received a an approval with conditions from the promise of nova scotia and uh the first thing i
00:08:06.380
wrote uh minister miller who's she she's she was no longer in her position anymore and i said you
00:08:12.420
You know, this is not the Canada I know and love.
00:08:19.480
Well, first, I was just shocked that it was, I was worried about our homes.
00:08:35.720
But it took a while before we learned, you know, we started, first thing we did, we said,
00:08:39.120
um this is this is crazy this makes no sense it makes no sense so let's find out you know
00:08:45.460
it just didn't make sense like a spaceport in in canso nova scotia it's not the first place you
00:08:52.080
would think no and it's it's it's very close to our community 2.8 kilometers to your home you were
00:08:57.460
telling me 2.8 kilometers to my home and it's closer to even some others yeah well basically
00:09:01.300
if you look at it as a u shape where the the open part of the u is the ocean okay so you basically
00:09:07.060
have three communities. We call them collectively Canso. There's Canso, there's Hazel Hill, and
00:09:11.860
there's Little Dover. And they sort of go around the three sides of the U. So yeah. And you have,
00:09:18.980
we have about 1,100 people within five and a half kilometers of this. And when they first started
00:09:23.380
this, they talked about this Ukrainian rocket, which is a 127 foot tall, untested Ukrainian
00:09:30.100
rocket that they were going to launch within three kilometers of our community. So naturally, yeah,
00:09:34.900
we were concerned well i i read your article and i started learning about the company behind this
00:09:40.500
maritime launch services and it is close to the sea so that's a maritime part but they've had this
00:09:48.020
property for about a decade they've only launched two rockets they haven't technically had had it
00:09:52.420
they they needed to get a lease and i'm not sure which year it was they didn't have the property
00:09:56.340
wasn't leased uh 10 years ago so they registered with joint stocks in 2016 and then all of this
00:10:02.740
yeah so they've had two rockets neither has gone into outer space one was by some students some
00:10:07.700
kids at york university and the other was a european rocket that sort of spun around and
00:10:12.180
fizzed out you had first one spun around the first one was only about one and a half meters tall
00:10:16.100
um like that's almost a toy watched it and it spun off and went so that's that's that that
00:10:21.860
that's pretty much a hobby rocket and the only regulations they really have were for
00:10:25.300
you know science for research and hobby rockets and to date the federal government still only has
00:10:30.660
as far as we understand um well they just did a consultation and they still don't have a framework
00:10:36.420
for space or uh or a proper regulations or requirements for launching into space despite
00:10:41.860
the fact that they've already get you know so this company maritime 100 million dollars yeah well
00:10:46.580
that's the thing this i was looking at the financials for this company and and it looked
00:10:52.100
like a i'm not going to say a shell company but it wasn't well you know they have no office here
00:10:58.260
they have an office and at purdy's in halifax that's uh i don't know if it's a satellite thing
00:11:03.620
there's no office in the community and they wouldn't have one because it would be egged and
00:11:08.260
protested at and you know there's no presence in the community well the thing that really got us to
00:11:13.700
come out here was the picture that you published of the so-called launch pad it's just a big gravel
00:11:19.460
area with a bit of a slab in it frank originally it had three pvc pipes sticking out of it at some
00:11:25.300
some point they shave those off or i don't know if they've been filled or you know it's basically
00:11:29.700
like a shed pad it's not a yeah i mean you couldn't launch anything for into space from it or
00:11:34.540
and and they've announced that they're going to have what they call an airport model where you
00:11:40.180
sort of you're a customer you bring your own rocket you bring your own rocket and launch it
00:11:46.540
i didn't know that was a thing i didn't i mean i guess these kids from york university brought
00:11:50.500
their own rocket but that that's not really a spaceport that that's sort of a toy area model
00:11:56.860
rocketry is this for real or is this just some financial scam i we think it's a it's a scam when
00:12:04.140
we first we first got together we did an event that was our sort of public forum and we brought
00:12:09.320
this this gentleman named don bowser and don bowser um was a friend of someone we knew a journalist
00:12:15.180
we knew and um he's put out a series of videos particularly about this ukrainian issue it's a
00:12:22.220
ukrainian company because there's a long history of of corruption okay and this looks like more of
00:12:29.180
the same so he's he he's worked in anti-corruption in ukraine and i would talk to him if i were you
00:12:34.780
because he he the red flags were it was pretty obvious to him very early on that this might be
00:12:39.980
be more of yeah there's environmental questions there's safety questions i don't think there's
00:12:47.340
such a thing as an airport spaceport where people bring their own rocket how ingenious right yeah
00:12:52.000
because it costs them i i think they have to pay insurance you might want to look at that
00:12:56.180
lease agreement because there may be a clause in there but the federal government is willing to
00:12:59.880
pick up i don't know um insurance the lease is it's a provincial crown land so they according to
00:13:07.220
uh department of natural resources um so we looked at that document it's thirteen thousand
00:13:12.940
five hundred dollars uh to lease annually so i mean what a great deal so this is provincial land
00:13:18.080
right and they're releasing it for thirteen thousand five hundred and then they're leasing
00:13:22.880
it back to the federal government for twenty million dollars a year so there's something
00:13:26.420
wrong with that well that's the thing is that this company had it was pretty sketchy um on paper was
00:13:33.660
losing an enormous amount of money uh its share price was almost worthless and then suddenly
00:13:40.460
the federal department of defense announces a 200 million dollar lease for what is an empty pad
00:13:49.320
and here's the crazy thing and i've never heard this before in my life it's a it's a 10-year lease
00:13:55.140
20 million bucks a year that works out too i did the math 54 000 a day for this empty pad but they
00:14:02.900
they backdated it by a year so the federal government the department of defense paid for
00:14:11.160
a year's lease 20 million dollars retroactively that they didn't use it so this year alone this
00:14:18.500
company this sketchy company will get 35 million bucks the backdated lease plus this year's least
00:14:24.760
35 million it's right there in the lease 35 million for doing nothing and like you just
00:14:31.980
explained they're actually only paying 13 000 a year for the land that i think that's a form of
00:14:39.480
money laundering because no one pays historically for a lease they didn't use unless they're just
00:14:46.120
trying to shove money to some friends there has to be someone who can look at the i mean i'm no
00:14:50.140
financial expert but i i looked at the the stock market because this is actually a publicly traded
00:14:55.180
company over the counter and the stock went from like two or three cents it's skyrocketed to
00:15:10.680
Who are these people who got a sweetheart deal,
00:15:31.480
i don't believe they're actually ever going to get a real spaceport here i don't think it makes
00:15:35.320
sense that's not the game the game is to i mean once the gravy train is they'll drag it on as
00:15:41.560
long as they as they can and then money's going in that's what i believe and then they'll just
00:15:46.040
vaporize and move somewhere else now you said that the local community is opposed to the space
00:15:52.200
part not everybody in the community is so what what we witness is um uh before a lot of people
00:15:58.680
were really aware of of what this was or what was happening the the part of the ea process is to form
00:16:05.560
a liaison that's the environmental assessment yeah is is to form a liaison committee so what happens
00:16:10.520
and this and this is all textbook this happens everywhere and i mean the whole consultation all
00:16:15.160
of it is all textbook you know so the company comes in and they strategically they strategically
00:16:21.880
uh choose people from certain organizations they form this group and and it all it's almost as if
00:16:27.480
What happens is a liaison committee is sort of sold on the project, and then that liaison committee sort of works to...
00:16:36.220
I mean, and this is where the issue with the petition, for instance, you know, what we saw happen with the petition.
00:16:40.920
I read about that, that people from out of town were signing the petition, the same names on there 20 times.
00:16:45.280
I think what had happened is they tried to circulate it in the community and weren't getting, you know, this is the whole...
00:16:50.660
I mean, there was a whole issue, I think, that RCMP were called, and they were basically told,
00:16:55.760
you need to leave the local cooperative store right this okay so i think what had happened
00:17:00.480
and we retrieved it from the legislature so we you know um what happened was um i think they just
00:17:08.580
couldn't find the names locally and they started shoving it along you know into the next town and
00:17:12.640
the next town and the you know and they just yeah the local support is not was so this company has
00:17:17.960
claimed that everybody wants this and you know and and i mean if you look at the and we've tried
00:17:22.920
to fight. I mean, press, press have put, put things out and we call, we contacted the editor
00:17:27.700
and said, this is false. The issue that the article with the Canadian Geographic was shocking.
00:17:32.120
And the first couple of paragraphs, they said there were 71,000 people living in Canso and,
00:17:36.220
and it all went downhill from there. So what happened is one of our group got in touch with
00:17:40.200
them and said, you know, this is all false. This is not, you know, they take the article down and
00:17:44.780
they edited a little and put it back up. Eventually it was taken down, but we've constantly had to
00:17:49.340
fight uh to get media to tell the truth about this because this company is constantly sending
00:17:56.760
out press releases you've probably seen the press releases and no one's fact checking anything no
00:18:01.100
one's and we live in the middle of you know we're we're a small community and we're all nova scotia
00:18:07.100
so no one's listening to us and they're not yeah well we're listening and i read your it was an
00:18:12.220
outstanding article you're a professional journalist no no boy it was it was rigorous
00:18:16.740
I'm a graduate of Canso High School and the University of King's College.
00:18:23.360
I have a dumb question, because I'm not an expert in rockets,
00:18:26.680
but I know a tiny bit about SpaceX, that's Elon Musk,
0.92
00:18:33.080
And one of the things I know is that where you launch the rocket
00:18:38.380
because these rockets are huge, like the size of a skyscraper, really,
00:18:45.320
So how on earth, if there's no vehicle assembly, like rocket assembly, if there's no factory, how can a rocket come here to be launched?
00:19:00.420
We've talked to people, and they said, another journalist, and she told us, she said, you know, in Toronto, or in, you know, points further east or west, people actually think that there's buildings out there, that there's a...
00:19:14.760
there's nothing there there's nothing there now we were it's all talk we were gonna try and go
00:19:19.720
there because i wanted to stand on that slab and do my video standing on the slab but it's a little
00:19:23.940
bit hard to get to are they trying to block people from seeing it or is it just so remote
00:19:30.000
it is remote and and but like i said there's people with atvs that go through there routinely
00:19:35.480
and don't seem to care about the um i don't know i'm sure they didn't they did not want
00:19:41.200
the photograph that i shared that was i mean i'm sure of that right it's shocking but it's also
00:19:46.660
funny basically that it it's not funny for us though we've had we've had to i mean it's absurd
00:19:51.980
that we've had to fight this for seven years it's disgusting the whole thing is disgusting really
00:19:56.440
we're being treated like you know something on the bottom of someone's shoe honestly our
00:20:02.020
politicians are they don't we've sat with them they don't listen to us they're all i think they've
00:20:07.140
all been either been manipulated or they're complicit in this i don't know a lot of countries
00:20:11.180
have a space program because it's kind of a national pride thing and it's sort of a bragging
00:20:16.520
thing and by the way there was recently a canadian astronaut on that nasa artemis flight so canada is
00:20:22.820
in space remember the old canadarm on the shuttle those are real things this lots of bright people
00:20:28.420
in canada this feels fake it feels like it's a i can't help but saying the word scam it's not real
00:20:37.460
this is not a national pride thing i don't know how they managed to get 200 million bucks for it
00:20:43.760
that's what puzzles me and that's why i care lobbying the i mean it's almost as if i mean
00:20:48.580
maybe the fed said you know just take this and go away we're sick of listening to you i have no idea
00:20:52.360
200 million including back pay i've never heard of paying back pay for a lease that you didn't
00:20:58.140
use it i don't know it's beyond surreal and i think people don't it's so insane i don't think
00:21:04.060
people really they can't even consider it's it's hard to believe honestly but this is what's
00:21:08.420
happening here i think your article lit a fire i saw there was a story in the national post
00:21:12.960
tristan hopper did that and he used that slab photo which is hilarious on social media
00:21:17.580
twitter is just taken and taken off that's why we came here because we saw that slab and i just
00:21:23.920
thought that surely can't be it um so you say they just don't even have a presence here they're just
00:21:29.560
not even hearing office here or anything they come once in a while and they go to the local um
00:21:33.960
one of the local uh little restaurant there and they you know but they meet with their liaison
00:21:39.080
committee you know what in their promotional materials they talk about the they talk about
00:21:43.720
the infrastructure they talk about services there's no infrastructure there's no services
00:21:48.680
no there isn't i really they're servicing themselves right this is all yeah you know
00:21:54.200
because they're publicly traded they're under strict scrutiny by um regulators for for investment
00:22:01.960
in fact one of the bosses uh was defrocked from as an investment dealer wasn't he
00:22:07.900
he was and you did a good biography of all the people involved they're all sketchy
00:22:14.240
they're they're all sketchy and i think there's a lot more that we haven't uncovered i think
00:22:19.240
there's there's going to be there's there may be some whistleblowers around who have something
00:22:23.140
people were fine hard to believe that this is it it's too it's too dirty people involved with this
00:22:29.620
spaceport have uh have been fined by nasa for uh failing to live up to their promises
00:22:39.380
they've been defrocked as investment dealers there's there's so many there's been corruption
00:22:45.460
in other countries i wrote to um i feel like we're a soft touch i wrote to minister mcginty
00:22:53.380
and we explained all of this right did he ever write back no mcginty never responded
00:22:57.880
prime minister carney's office respondent said you know we're we'll be sure to read
00:23:04.000
you know the sort of stock the same email they give to everybody right i understand that they've
00:23:09.060
been informed yeah well maybe maybe they're in on it let me ask you the premier of nova scotia
00:23:13.600
former premier steven mcneil gave a glowing endorsement of this when he was premier and
00:23:19.360
surprise surprise he's on their advisory board now yeah well you have to wonder sylvan laporte
00:23:26.800
they signed a deal with ukrainians in 2017 to cooperate in space despite all of this
00:23:33.120
dirty you know the corruption the ukrainian space agency and sylvan laporte is is on the team right
00:23:39.200
i don't know i can't you know i can't outright say it's corruption i don't know but it needs
00:23:44.160
i wrote the auditor general um yesterday i think and said can you please you know karen hogan can
00:23:50.400
you please look into this because there's something terribly wrong with this yeah yeah well this i'm
00:23:56.000
so glad that you have taken a public stand and i'm glad the story's going viral because of those
00:24:01.280
photos hopefully that we can add to some of this discussion is there anything else that you'd like
00:24:06.080
to tell us about um because there's so much information about this uh it's is there a
00:24:13.520
moment is there a milestone or an event coming up that uh it that we should be looking at the
00:24:19.680
event i want the event to be i want them to pull the plug on this ridiculous project and i want it
00:24:24.720
to be investigated so you know i mean we'll keep doing what we're doing and we'll keep digging but
00:24:30.240
this needs to be looked at because it's wrong on every level it's wrong