Rebel News Podcast - I went to Nova Scotia to find the new Canadian spaceport

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

00:00:24.040 Shame on you, you sensorious boobug.

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.

00:00:57.920 It's access to space itself.

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,

00:01:18.380 our people, our security, and our sovereignty.

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.

00:01:35.100 As part of Canada's sovereign launch program,

00:01:38.800 this agreement will support the construction of a launch pad

00:01:41.760 for use by the Department of National Defence,

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.

00:02:29.760 Ezra Levant for Rebel News.

00:02:31.120 I am in the small town of Canso, Nova Scotia.

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.

00:03:07.280 But there is no 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.

00:06:30.480 Ezra Levant here for Rebel News.

00:06:32.220 I'm in Canso, Nova Scotia.

00:06:34.480 What a beautiful place.

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.

00:06:42.600 He wrote Barrett's Privateers.

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.

00:06:54.740 That's how beautiful it is.

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

00:07:06.000 researched.

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.

00:08:16.340 This is not my country.

00:08:17.620 What were you worried about?

00:08:18.360 Something really wrong.

00:08:19.480 Well, first, I was just shocked that it was, I was worried about our homes.

00:08:27.320 I was worried about our way of life.

00:08:29.940 I was worried about the environment around us.

00:08:34.120 Everything about it, I was worried about.

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

00:15:01.480 60 plus cents.

00:15:03.280 So the people who had their stock

00:15:05.440 and converted it to stock at five cents,

00:15:07.820 they multiplied their money by 10.

00:15:10.680 Who are these people who got a sweetheart deal,

00:15:14.340 a backdated lease,

00:15:16.260 a $35 million bonus from this government?

00:15:19.700 I've never heard of this before.

00:15:22.880 I've never heard of it.

00:15:24.100 Have you ever heard of a backdated lease?

00:15:26.060 They're some highly manipulative characters.

00:15:27.940 Yeah.

00:15:28.300 They really are.

00:15:29.320 And they've done a lot of damage

00:15:30.400 in this community already.

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...

00:16:35.040 Be like an advocate.

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.

00:18:20.620 Well, you're a pride to those organizations.

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

00:18:31.300 and I know a tiny bit about NASA.

00:18:33.080 And one of the things I know is that where you launch the rocket

00:18:36.040 is often where you assemble them, build them,

00:18:38.380 because these rockets are huge, like the size of a skyscraper, really,

00:18:43.600 some of those new ones that Elon Musk is.

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?

00:18:55.440 I don't understand that.

00:18:56.420 Oh, gee, we don't understand either.

00:18:58.260 How do they pitch it?

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...

00:19:13.740 It's barren.

00:19:14.040 It's a slab.

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

00:24:35.440 Great to talk with you. Thanks for your time.

00:24:37.440 You too.

Rebel News Podcast - April 24, 2026

I went to Nova Scotia to find the new Canadian spaceport

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