As thawing bilateral relations between Canada and China produce new trading partnerships on electric-vehicles and agricultural products, it would “not be wise” for Prime Minister Mark Carney to revisit the government’s 5G ban on the Chinese telecoms firm Huawei, according to former Canadian Security Intelligence Service director Ward Elcock.
“There’s an important security rationale behind keeping them off the 5G network,” Elcock, who led CSIS from 1994 to 2004, told The Hill Times. “If you allow a foreign communications network into your system, then you’re creating holes and gaps.”
“I don’t think it should be on the table … and I’d be very surprised if it is.”
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Carney’s (Nepean, Ont.) trip to China last week marked the first time a Canadian prime minister had visited the nation in more than eight years. Following then-prime minister Justin Trudeau’s state visit in 2017, Canada-China relations deteriorated after the 2018 arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver, B.C., which was followed by China’s imprisonment of Canadian citizens Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.
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China was also identified by Justice Marie-Josée Hogue as one of the largest perpetrators of foreign interference in Canadian democratic processes, following a recent public inquiry into the subject.
“The Chinese would never have bought [now-defunct Canadian telecoms firm] Nortel, even though Nortel tried in vain to sell stuff to them,” said Elcock, also a former deputy minister of national defence. “So, I think it’s highly improbable, and the government would face a lot of criticism, if they allowed Huawei into our network.”
“It just makes no sense because of Canada’s security interests.”
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However, some stakeholders suggested the 5G ban on Huawei may not be the most effective policy approach for Canada.
Ali Dehghantanha, a professor at Guelph University and Canada Research Chair in Cybersecurity and Threat, … explained that the ban was “easy” to bypass, as many Canadian firms continue to use Chinese materials and products in their offerings.
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“Restricting access just because a vendor is headquartered in a certain place is meaningless,” Dehghantanha said … “[Ottawa] needs to specify proper guidelines or mandates that, if a device wants to be deployed on the network, show what security criteria it has to pass,” he said. “That is something that is completely missing.”
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Just because we are doing more trade with China does not mean we are opening to the door to everything.
Good gawd. The fear factor being shared is crazy. Don’t we have enough to worry about? Then why are we making shit up to scare each other instead of focusing on the here-and-now stuff?
Have you not seen the memes? Or are you saying that the Great Leaf Forward isn’t real, and I spent my life’s savings on pictures of Mao Zedong for nothing?
Would seem pretty on brand, honestly.
Remember that we’re stopping trade with the US over their nonsense only to immediately go to the people who have agents here going after their ex-citizens and shit. Of course, there’s nothing more Canadian than trading one bag if shit for another just because it’s a different colour and then expecting it to be any better.
I hope not… So far it’s just EVs I think, yes?
Canola as well.
“[Ottawa] needs to specify proper guidelines or mandates that, if a device wants to be deployed on the network, show what security criteria it has to pass,” he said. “That is something that is completely missing.”
The security guy is right though. Today the US vendors we use present a national security vulnerability. So far we’ve largely ignored that because CSIS works with their American counterparts.
I don’t know if we should or shouldn’t consider Huawei. They used to be filled with outdated, vulnerable versions of OpenSSL ten years ago, when I was paying attention. But the way to tackle the issue regardless of the vendor is to have testing and certification framework all of them have to pass to be imported and sold. It would also be nice to have a version of this apply to consumer networking imports too. Those are sold with little restriction today.
Ask NorTel about Huawei.
Blame the government for selling their patents to the US for a year’s worth of royalties.
I mean, the Chinese probably stole some during that year-long breach but yeah, that’s but a part of the shit show. Not the cause of the destruction of Nortel.
Chinese espionage probably didn’t help with Nortel’s other major fuckups. That said keeping your trade secrets secret comes down to information security. If your security practices let hackers stay in your networks for years… you’re not gonna keep many of them. State actors like China, US, Israel, Russia, and others, are constantly trying to penetrate valuable targets. The more audit and verification of equipment we do, the more secrets we can keep.
We’re putting Chinese devices in all the offices and private meetings in Canadian corporations through our phones, laptops, TVs and meeting equipment, etc. Yet, somehow through a combination of hardware, software mechanisms of trust we are reasonably confident information isn’t leaking through them. I don’t know how well this confidence is placed, but it’s how things operate. TD Bank doesn’t want to pay for Canadian-made laptops so it uses Lenovo. 🤷♂️
Not saying I don’t want Canandian-made laptops BTW. In fact given how capital-intensive current laptop manufacturing in China has become, it’s becoming more and more viable have laptops made in Canada at a reasonable price if we want it.
This is what needs to happen to avoid falling into blind ideological biases.
It’s almost hilarious how you are spreading the same pseudo-intellectual ‘opinion’ on apparently any issue, and everything ends up with the same pro-Chinese rhetoric.
When you look at the world through a China-bad lens, everything involving China which isn’t explicitly framed as China-bad appears as pro-China. If you take off those glasses you’d see more clearly.
Doesn’t it sound weird to yourself when you relentlessly and exclusively convey pro-Chinese propaganda points while accusing others of being biased?
During the last few days alone, you provided comments with no meaning, made inferences from books you apparently haven’t even read, referred to ‘intellectuals’ you can’t name, while constantly spreading pseudo-intellectual opinions paired with second-hand intimidation.
Why don’t you give up on this community already? Things have been increasingly not going your way here. Stick to communities where the mods and members are more receptive to your agenda.
We already went over this two months ago and a few minutes ago with your @Sepia@mander.xyz sock puppet account.
OMG
What the hell are you talking about? I rarely talk about China outside of your China-bad posts, which you post almost daily, if not from this, from one of your alt accounts. This shit is getting unhinged.
Why don’t you give up on this community already? Things have been increasingly not going your way here.
What. Buddy I’ve been contributing to lemmy.ca for more than 2 years in various capacities, ever since I left Reddit. My comments here aren’t getting mass downvoted like yours. Don’t know what are you smoking but I think you should lay off the pipe.
Why don’t you give up on this community already? Things have been increasingly not going your way here. Stick to communities where the mods and members are more receptive to your agenda.
This is a great resource. Thank you for sharing a list of accounts trying to astroturf an agenda.
Honestly I didn’t notice this shit until it started in !Canada and especially after I had some conversations with this character where I thought we’re having a good faith convo, as most of us here do, and I got completely bad faith engagement, and answers from alt accounts. Only then I noticed the pattern. These days I only engage with them for the sake of others.
