$200 Million for a Spaceport in a Fishing Village: Carney's Latest Vanity Project
While Canadians can't afford rent, Mark Carney handed $200 million to a rocket company in remote Nova Scotia. Locals call it "a scam."
Canada's Department of National Defence has signed a 10-year, $200-million lease for a so-called "spaceport" in Canso, Nova Scotia — a remote fishing community of fewer than 750 people on the northeastern tip of mainland Nova Scotia. The deal works out to roughly $54,000 per day of taxpayer money flowing to a company that has never completed an orbital rocket launch and whose stock was trading at just pennies before the federal deal was announced.
The story was first broken by citizen journalist Marie Lumsden in the Halifax Examiner, and independently investigated on the ground by Rebel News' Ezra Levant, who drove three hours from Halifax to Canso to inspect the facility himself.
What he found was what locals already knew: a concrete slab on a gravel lot.
What Is Canso?
Canso billed itself as "the Oldest Fishing Port on Mainland North America." Once a thriving town of nearly 1,500, it has been shrinking for a century. The 2016 census counted 739 residents, with median individual earnings of $30,502. It is the kind of community that has been forgotten by Ottawa for decades — which may explain why residents say they felt like "a soft touch" when a rocket company came calling.
The spaceport site sits approximately 2.8 kilometres from the nearest homes. One resident told Rebel News the project is effectively in their backyard — and they never had a real say.
The Company: Maritime Launch Services
Maritime Launch Services (MLS) was founded in 2016 in Halifax. Its original plan was to launch Ukrainian-built Cyclone-4M rockets into polar orbit. That plan collapsed in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine and the Ukrainian supplier could no longer deliver.
With no rocket of its own, MLS pivoted to what it calls an "airport model" — leasing the pad to other companies. The launches that have actually occurred at the site tell the story plainly:
- July 2023: A student amateur rocket from York University reached 13.4 kilometres altitude — roughly the cruising altitude of a commercial airliner.
- November 2025: A Dutch company's "Barracuda" rocket reached less than 100 kilometres — sub-orbital, meaning nothing reached orbit.
No orbital launches. No commercial payload delivery. Locals and critics have taken to calling the operation a "hobby rocket" — and that characterization is hard to argue with. Meanwhile, MLS itself pays just $13,500 per year to lease the land from the Nova Scotia provincial government. Ottawa is paying them $20 million per year for the same asset.
There's one more detail that should stop every Canadian in their tracks: the federal lease is backdated by one year. The Carney government agreed to pay $20 million for a year that already passed — before the deal was even signed.
The Minister Who Didn't Write Back
Residents concerned about the project wrote letters to the responsible minister. David McGuinty, Carney's Minister of National Defence (appointed May 2025), never responded. McGuinty — brother of former Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, MP for Ottawa South since 2004 — oversees the DND lease. His office has not explained the decision to backdate payments or why the government is paying $54,000 a day for a gravel pad that its tenant leases for $37 a day.
The Math That Should Embarrass Every Liberal
Canada is in a housing crisis. The average Canadian home now costs $817,000. Rental vacancy rates in major cities hover near zero. Tens of thousands of Canadians are sleeping rough. And yet the Carney government found $200 million — not for affordable housing, not for emergency rooms, not for rural health care — but for a rocket pad in a village of 739 people, operated by a company whose greatest achievement to date is launching a university club's amateur rocket to the altitude of a passenger jet.
For context: $200 million could build approximately 800 modular affordable housing units at $250,000 each. It could fund 200 rural doctors for a decade. It could do nearly anything — except apparently compete with the appeal of a vanity spaceport that benefits a penny-stock company and makes for a nice photo opportunity.
Who Benefits?
The political connections behind this deal remain murky. What is clear is that MLS's stock price rose dramatically after the federal announcement — benefiting whoever held shares going in. The local Liberal MP for the Canso area is Mike Kelloway. The deal was signed under the authority of the Carney government's Department of National Defence. The rationale — framing a commercial rocket pad as a national defence asset — raises questions that neither McGuinty nor the PMO has answered in full.
Canso residents called it "a scam" before the ink was dry. They may not be wrong.
This is what $200 million looks like when government picks winners. Not homes. Not doctors. A rocket that spins in the wrong direction.
Sources: Rebel News / Ezra Levant on-the-ground report (rebelnews.com); Halifax Examiner investigative report by Marie Lumsden; Wikipedia / Maritime Launch Services; Statistics Canada (Canso, 2016 Census); Wikipedia / David McGuinty.