Was the British colonization and funding of Canada, New Zealand, and Australia profitable? All three colonies were not profitable for decades after their formation.

Yet looking back, colonialism was probably the most profitable venture ever undertaken. All three of them ended up becoming key allies and instrumental trading partners.

Think on a longer time scale.

I'm pretty sure that Britain actually had pretty specific goals of profitability from the get-go.

Building those colonies involved a lot of slavery and forced or indentured labour.

All of those places had valuable resources for extraction. That was the whole basis for their colonization. The whole basis of colonialism, itself.

Mars has a lot of rocks.