Ezra Levant and Marie Lumsden investigate a $200 million Canadian spaceport deal in Nova Scotia, exposing a concrete slab site lacking infrastructure despite government claims of rivaling SpaceX. They highlight financial irregularities, including a retroactive $20 million lease payment totaling $35 million for Maritime Launch Services, a shell company with dubious leadership whose stock surged after the announcement. With only two failed hobby launches and allegations of rigged environmental assessments involving former Premier Stephen McNeil, the report concludes this venture resembles a money laundering scheme enriching investors rather than building legitimate national space capability. [Automatically generated summary]
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Nova Scotia's Hobby Spaceport00:14:32
Tonight, I'm in small town Nova Scotia to look for this Liberal government spaceport.
It's April 24th, and this is the Azra Levant Show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Interconnected system, from Yellowknife to Trenton to ships and submarines at sea and to fighter jets in the air, Canada needs its own space capability.
But it's not only satellites that are critical to the defence and security of Canadians, it's access to space itself.
It's why we're taking steps to strengthen our space capabilities so that we can launch from right here on Canadian soil.
Simply put, every investment we make in space today.
And every technology that we develop is an investment in our economy, our people, our security, and our sovereignty.
That's why I'm thrilled to announce that the Department of National Defense has signed a 10 year, $200 million agreement with Maritime Launch Services.
As part of Canada's sovereign launch program, this agreement will support the construction of a launch pad for use by the Department of National Defense.
The Canadian Armed Forces and the wider Government of Canada.
Maritime Launch Services will build this spaceport facility at a site near Canso, Nova Scotia.
It's an ideal location for operating safely and efficiently thanks to its natural geography and proximity to the open ocean.
Under this agreement, Maritime Launch Services must spend 90% of the $200 million here in Canada.
Which means $180 million is going back to Canadian businesses.
This investment not only supports our national defense, it will create high value jobs and contribute to the Nova Scotia economy.
Ezra Levant for Rebel News.
I am in the small town of Canso, Nova Scotia.
We flew to Halifax and then drove three hours here, and we came because of a picture a picture of a port, not a seaport, but of a proposed spaceport being built in tiny Canso, Nova Scotia.
And this spaceport recently got a $200 million contract from Canada's Department of Defense in the form of a 10 year lease.
Canada's military is spending $200 million leasing this spaceport, but there is no spaceport.
It's just a slab of concrete on a bit of a field of gravel.
There is no spaceport, but there is a $200 million lease.
Over 10 years, that's $20 million a year, works up to $54,000.
Thousand dollars a day for an empty plot of land for the company Marine Launch Services that they actually rent from the province for less than 15 grand a year.
It's the craziest thing I've seen a 200 million dollar military lease for a spaceport that doesn't have anything on it but some concrete slab.
We had to come out to investigate, and as we were making the journey, we studied more of what we saw and all the irregularities.
How this company Marine Launch Services. Was basically a penny stock until this massive financing came in, in which the holders of the stock instantly became millionaires.
The stock price jumped from a few pennies to 70 cents as all that government cash came in.
Who were the people who profited?
And more to the point, is there any spaceport at all?
The Marine Launch Services has had this spaceport for years, but there's only been two launches, and they're not into outer space.
They're more like toy rockets.
In fact, the first one was by some students at York University whose rocket was a meter and a half high.
It's the kind of thing that kids would play at.
It's not a real place.
And unlike, say, Elon Musk's. SpaceX or NASA, there's no infrastructure there.
There's no buildings at all.
We were unable to get to the slab.
We'll try another day, I'm sure.
But there's simply nothing there.
The idea, which is so bizarre, I've never heard of it before, is that companies that want to launch a rocket will bring their rocket to Canso, Nova Scotia, and launch it from this slab.
So they're not going to build any rockets here.
They're not going to house any rockets here.
You B Y O R, bring your own rocket.
To cancel.
Needless to say, the local people here sense a scam afoot and they also have questions.
For example, environmentalists will this damage the fisheries?
Safety there are houses within just a couple of kilometers of this spaceport.
I suppose, on the one hand, the fact that it's so obviously a scam that will never actually shoot anything into outer space is a relief.
But the whole thing is so bizarre, we simply had to check it out.
We were motivated largely by a deeply researched piece on this spaceport, not by a regime journalist.
CBC or CTV, but by a citizen journalist who simply started to document the crazy things she saw and heard and what she found online about this very strange company, Marine Launch Services, that started off as a Ukrainian space project that would have a Ukrainian made rocket, abandoned that idea and is now a spaceport in Kanso.
Follow me as we talk to Marie Lumsden, the author of that article.
Ezra Levant here for Rebel News.
I'm in Canso, Nova Scotia.
What a beautiful place.
A few hours, about three hours drive from Halifax.
This is the hometown of Stan Rogers and his family.
He wrote Barrett's Privateers.
He was a great songwriter and really had the culture of Nova Scotia.
And just looking around, it couldn't be more beautiful.
Oh, I ache with nostalgia for a place I've never been before.
That's how beautiful it is.
But I'm worried about this place because I just read an article.
In the Halifax Examiner, which is a left of center publication, but I read an article that was so meticulously researched.
I came out here with my videographer, Lincoln Jay, because just down there, amidst all the beauty, is this cockamamie scheme, and I'm going to call it a scheme, to build a spaceport.
You heard it right a spaceport.
And the government of Canada just signed a $200 million lease for an empty plot of land there.
And they say they're going to rival SpaceX.
I'm talking with Marie Lumsden, who wrote the article in the Halifax Examiner.
It was meticulously researched.
It was enough that we got up and flew and drove all the way here.
That was very powerful.
Tell us a little bit about this spaceport that you've been studying.
So in 2019, we found out that this project received an approval with conditions from the province of Nova Scotia.
And the first thing I wrote, Minister Miller, who's she's she's she was no longer in her position anymore, and I said, You know, uh, this is not the Canada I know and love, this is not my country.
What were you worried about?
Really wrong.
Well, first, I was just a I just I was just shocked that it was I was worried about our homes, I was worried about our way of life, I was worried about um the environment around us, everything about it, I was worried about.
But it took a while before we learned, you know, we started to first thing we did, we said, Um, This is crazy.
This makes no sense.
It makes no sense, so let's find out.
It just didn't make sense.
Like a spaceport in Canso, Nova Scotia, it's not the first place you would think.
No, and it's very close to our community.
2.8 kilometers to your home, you were telling me.
2.8 kilometers to my home.
And it's closer to even some others.
Yeah, well, basically, if you look at it as a U shape where the open part of the U is the ocean, okay, so you basically have three communities.
We call them collectively Canso.
There's Canso, there's Hazel Hill, and there's Little Dover.
And they sort of go around the three sides of the U.
So, yeah.
And you have, we have about 1,100 people within five and a half kilometers of this.
And when they first started this, they talked about this Ukrainian rocket, which is a 127 foot tall, untested Ukrainian rocket that they were going to launch within three kilometers of our community.
So, naturally, yeah, we were concerned.
Well, I read your article and I started learning about the company behind this, Maritime Launch Services.
And it is close to the sea, so that's a maritime part.
They've had this property for about a decade.
They've only launched two rockets.
They haven't technically had it.
They needed to get a lease.
And I'm not sure which year it was.
They didn't have the property leased 10 years ago.
So they registered with joint stocks in 2016.
And then all of this, you know.
So they've had two rockets.
Neither has gone into outer space.
One was by some students, some kids at York University.
And the other was a European rocket that sort of spun around and fizzed out.
The first one spun around.
The first one was only about one and a half meters tall.
Like that's almost a toy.
They launched it and it's.
Spun off and went.
It wouldn't have me.
So that's that big.
It's pretty much a hobby rocket.
And the only regulations they really have were for science, for research in hobby rockets.
And to date, the federal government still only has, as far as we understand, well, they just did a consultation and they still don't have a framework for space or a proper regulations or requirements for launching into space.
Despite the fact that they've already, you know.
So this company, Maritime.
$200 million.
Yeah.
Well, that's the thing.
I was looking at the financials for this company and.
And it looked like a, I'm not going to say a shell company, but it wasn't.
Well, you know, they have no office here.
They have an office at Purdy's in Halifax.
That's, I don't know if it's a satellite thing.
There's no office in the community, and they wouldn't have one because it would be egged and protested at.
And there's no presence in the community.
Well, the thing that really got us to come out here was the picture that you published of the so called launch pad.
It's just a big gravel area with a bit of a slab in it.
Frank.
Originally, it had three PVC pipes sticking out of it.
At some point, they Shave those off, or I don't know if they've been filled, or you know, it's basically like a shed pad.
It's not a, yeah, I mean, you couldn't launch anything from into space from it, or well, and and they've announced that they're gonna have what they call an airport model where you sort of you're a customer, you bring your own rocket, you bring your own rocket and launch it.
I didn't know that was a thing.
I didn't, I mean, I guess these kids from York University brought their own rocket, but that that's not really a spaceport, that that's sort of a toy area model rocketry.
Is this for real or is this just some financial scam?
We think it's a scam.
When we first got together, we did an event that was our sort of public forum, and we brought this gentleman named Don Bowser.
And Don Bowser was a friend of someone we knew, a journalist we knew, and he's put out a series of videos, particularly about this Ukrainian issue.
It's a Ukrainian company.
Because there's a long history of corruption, okay?
And this looks like more of the same.
So he's worked in anti corruption in Ukraine.
And I would talk to him if I were you because the red flags were pretty obvious to him very early on that this might be more of, yeah.
I don't think there's such a thing as an airport, spaceport where people bring their own rocket.
But how ingenious, right?
Because it costs them.
I think they have to pay insurance.
You might want to look at that lease agreement because there may be a clause in there.
I do.
But the federal government is willing to pick up, I don't know, insurance.
The lease is a provincial crown land.
So, they, according to the Department of Natural Resources, so we looked at that document, it's $13,500 to lease annually.
So, I mean, what a great deal.
So, this is provincial land, right?
And they're leasing it for $13,500 and then they're leasing it back to the federal government for $20 million a year.
So, there's something wrong with that.
Well, that's the thing is that this company was pretty sketchy, on paper, was losing an enormous amount of money, its share price was almost worthless.
And then suddenly the federal department of defense announces a 200 million dollar lease for what is an empty pad.
And here's the crazy thing, and I've never heard this before in my life it's a 10 year lease, 20 million bucks a year.
That works out to I did the math, $54,000 a day for this empty pad.
But they backdated it by a year.
So the federal government, the Department of Defense, Paid for a year's lease, $20 million retroactively that they didn't use it.
So this year alone, this company, this sketchy company, will get 35 million bucks, the backdated lease plus this year's lease, 35 million.
It's right there in the lease.
35 million for doing nothing.
And like you just explained, they're actually only paying $13,000 a year for the land.
I think that's a form of money laundering because no one pays.
Historically, for a lease they didn't use, unless they're just trying to shove money to some friends.
Thirty-Five Million For Nothing00:09:50
There has to be someone who can look at the.
I mean, I'm no financial expert, but.
I looked at the stock market because this is actually a publicly traded company over the counter.
And the stock went from like two or three cents, it skyrocketed to 60 plus cents.
So the people who had their stock and converted it to stock at five cents, they multiplied their money by 10.
Who are these people who got a sweetheart deal?
A backdated lease, a $35 million bonus from this government.
I've never heard of this before.
I've never heard of it.
Have you ever heard of a backdated lease?
They're really manipulative characters.
Yeah.
They really are.
And they've done a lot of damage in this community already.
I don't believe they're actually ever going to get a real spaceport here.
I don't think it makes sense.
That's not the game.
The game is to, I mean, once the gravy train is, they'll drag it on as long as they can.
And then they'll.
That's what I believe.
And then they'll just vaporize and move somewhere else.
Now, you said that the local community is opposed to this space part.
Not everybody in the community is.
So, what we witness is before a lot of people were really aware of what this was or what was happening, the part of the EA process is to form a liaison.
That's the environmental assessment.
Is to form a liaison committee.
So, what happens, and this is all textbook, this happens everywhere.
And the whole consultation, all of it is all textbook, you know.
The company comes in and they strategically choose people from certain organizations.
They form this group.
And it's almost as if what happens is a liaison committee is sort of sold on the project.
And then that liaison committee sort of works to be like an advocate.
I mean, and this is where the issue with the petition, for instance, you know, what we saw happen with the petition.
I read about that, that people from out of town were signing the petition, the same names on there 20 times.
I think what had happened is they tried to circulate it in the community and weren't getting.
You know, this is the whole, I mean, there was a whole issue, I think that RCMP were called, and they were basically told you need to leave the local cooperative store, right?
This, okay.
So I think what had happened, and we retrieved it from the legislature, so we, you know, what happened was, I think they just couldn't find the names locally, and they started shoving it along, you know, into the next town and the next town in there, you know, and they just, yeah.
The local support is not, so this company has claimed that everybody wants this, and, you know, and I mean, if you look at the, And we've tried to fight.
I mean, press have put things out, and we contacted the editor and said, This is false.
The issue, the article with the Canadian Geographic was shocking.
And the first couple of paragraphs, they said there were 71,000 people living in Canso, and it all went downhill from there.
So what happened is one of our group got in touch with them and said, You know, this is all false.
This is not, you know.
They take the article down, then they edit it a little and put it back up.
Eventually, it was taken down.
But we've constantly had to fight to get media to.
Tell the truth about this because this company is constantly sending out press releases.
You've probably seen the press releases.
No one's fact checking anything.
No one's.
And we live in the middle of, you know, we're a small community and we're all Nova Scotia.
So no one's listening to us and they're not.
Well, we're listening.
And I read your, it was an outstanding article.
Are you a professional journalist?
No.
Boy, it was rigorous.
I'm a graduate of Canso High School and the University of King's College.
Well, you're a pride to those organizations.
I have a dumb question because I'm not an expert in rockets, but I know a tiny bit about SpaceX, that's Elon Musk's, and I know a tiny bit about NASA.
And one of the things I know is that where you launch the rocket is often where you assemble them, build them, because these rockets are huge.
Like they're the size of a skyscraper, really.
Some of those new ones that Elon Musk is.
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.
I don't understand that.
Oh, gee, we don't understand it either.
I don't understand.
How do they pitch it?
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 barren, it's a slab.
There's nothing there.
There's nothing there.
Now, we were, it's all talk.
We were going to try and go there because I wanted to stand on that slab and do my video standing on the slab, but it's a little bit hard to get to.
Are they trying to block people from seeing it?
Or is it just so remote?
It is remote.
But like I said, there are people with ATVs that go through there routinely and don't seem to care about the.
I don't know.
I'm sure they did not want the photograph that I shared.
That was.
I'm sure of that, right?
It's shocking, but it's also funny.
Basically, it's not funny for us, though.
It's absurd that we've had to fight this for seven years.
It's disgusting.
The whole thing is disgusting, really.
We're being treated like, you know, something on the bottom of someone's shoe.
Honestly, our politicians are they don't.
We've sat with them, they don't listen to us.
They're all, I think, they've all been either manipulated or they're complicit in this.
I don't know.
A lot of countries have a space program because it's kind of a national pride thing and it's sort of a bragging thing.
And by the way, there was recently a Canadian astronaut on that NASA Artemis flight.
So Canada is in space.
Remember the old Canada arm on the shuttle?
Those are real things.
This lots of bright people in Canada, right?
This feels fake, not just wishes, it feels like it's a.
I can't help but saying the word scam.
It's not real.
This is not a national pride thing.
I don't know how they managed to get 200 million bucks for it.
That's what puzzles me.
And that's why I care.
They're lobbying the.
I mean, it's almost as if maybe the Fed said, you know, just take this and go away.
We're sick of listening to you.
I have no idea.
200 million.
Including back pay.
I've never heard of paying back pay for a lease that you didn't use it.
It's beyond surreal.
I think people don't.
It's so insane.
I don't think people really.
They can't even consider it's hard to believe, honestly.
But this is what's happening here.
I think your article lit a fire.
I saw there was a story in the National Post.
Tristan Hopper did that, and he used that slab photo, which is hilarious.
On social media, Twitter is just taken off.
That's why we came here because we saw that slab, and I just thought that surely can't be it.
So you say they just don't even have a presence here.
They're just not even here in the office here or anything.
They come once in a while and they go to the local, one of the local little restaurants out there, and they, you know, but.
They meet with their liaison committee.
You know what?
In their promotional materials, they talk about the infrastructure, they talk about services.
There's no infrastructure, there's no services.
No, there isn't.
I really.
They're servicing themselves, right?
This is all.
Yeah.
You know, because they're publicly traded, they're under strict scrutiny by regulators for investment.
In fact, one of the bosses was defrocked as an investment dealer, wasn't he?
He was.
And you did a good biography of all the people involved.
They're all sketchy.
They are all sketchy.
And I think there's a lot more that we haven't uncovered.
I think there's going to be some whistleblowers around who have something to say.
People were fined.
It's hard to believe that this is it.
It's too dirty.
People involved with this spaceport have been fined by NASA for failing to live up to their promises.
They've been defrocked as investment dealers.
There's.
There's so many, there's been corruption in other countries.
I wrote to.
I feel like we're a soft touch.
I wrote to Minister McGinty and we explained all of this, right?
Did he ever write back?
No, McGinty never responded.
Let me ask you.
Prime Minister Kearney's office responded and said, you know, we'll be sure to read, you know, the sort of stock, the same email they give to everybody, right?
I understand that.
They've been informed.
Yeah, well, maybe they're in on it.
Let me ask you the Premier of Nova Scotia, former Premier, Stephen McNeil, Gave a glowing endorsement of this when he was premier.
And surprise, surprise, he's on their advisory board now.
Yeah, well, you have to wonder.
Sylvain Laporte, they signed a deal with the Ukrainians in 2017 to cooperate in space, despite all of this dirty, you know, the corruption in the Ukrainian Space Agency.
And Sylvain Laporte is on the team, right?
I don't know.
I can't, you know, I can't outright say it's corruption.
I don't know.
But it needs, I wrote the Auditor General yesterday, I think, and said, can you please, you know, Karen Hogan, can you please look into this?
Because there's something.
Terribly wrong with this.
Yeah.
Well, listen, I'm so glad that you have taken a public stand.
And I'm glad the story's going viral because of those photos.
Hopefully, that we can add to some of this discussion.
Is there anything else that you'd like to tell us about?
Because there's so much information about this.
Is there a moment, a milestone or an event coming up that we should be looking at?
I want the event to be, I want them to pull the plug on this ridiculous project, and I want it to be investigated.
So, you know, I mean, we'll keep doing what we're doing and we'll keep digging, but this needs to be looked at because it's wrong on every level.