The following is a transcript of Christian Leuprecht’s testimony before the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research. He discusses the issue of Chinese infiltration and cooptation of Canadian research.
The recording occurred on June 20, 2023.
By Christian Leuprecht, June 20, 2023
Preamble
As early as 2018, in an OpEd in the Toronto Star entitled “China’s Silent Invasion of Western Universities,” I had flagged research on concerns about research collaboration on cooperation of Canadian universities and researchers by the PRC, CCP, Chinese companies and entities related to China’s defence, intelligence and national security apparatus and related research institutions. As I wrote at the time, between 2007 and 2017, China’s National University of Defence and Technology (NUDT) and similar institutions sponsored over 2,500 military scientists and engineers to infiltrate universities abroad, leverage overseas expertise, research and training and strategically develop relationships with researchers and institutions in technologically advanced countries to improve military technology”. At the time, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, in a report entitled “Picking flowers, making honey”, identified 300 of those 2,500 military scientists – that is, over 11% — to have developed collaborations with Canadian institutions and researchers. Among universities outside of China with collaborations with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) – the armed wing of the Communist Party of China – three Canadian universities ranked in the top 10: the University of Waterloo, the University of Toronto, and McGill University. Waterloo and McGill’s problematic relationships show up again in a very detailed January 2023 report by the Centre for Research Security and Integrity, as do other Canadian universities.
Many of the PLA researchers simply use an affiliation with an existing non-PLA institution in the Canadian visa application. That makes their fraud hard for Canada to detect. Operatives disguise their military affiliations, such as claiming to be from non-existent academic institutions and inviting themselves on the pretense of supposedly fully funded scholarships and fellowships, to target areas such as hypersonic missiles, navigation technology, quantum physics, signal processing, cryptography, and autonomous vehicles. To be clear: research data obtained in Canada have direct application to weapons development and other strategic military purposes. No need to belabour here China’s ostensible attempt to capture the Trudeau Foundation and the way China has previously leveraged Confucius Institutes as an instrument of soft power on Canadian university campuses.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal on 20 January 2023, China also leverages academic institutions to circumvent bans, on importing certain microchips, for example. In a case for which the government continues to obstruct the release of documents to parliamentary committee, Chinese operatives appear to have infiltrated Canada’s National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg, one of the few Level 4 labs in the world, to exfiltrate research, research practices, IP, and virus samples.
Meanwhile, Le Journal de Montréal recently flagged a sizeable gift by Huawei to Corcordia University, and opaque research relationships between Huawei and McGill University, l’Ecole Polytechnique and l’Institut national de la recherche scientifique. Huawei money is found in many other Canadian universities, including Western, Calgary, Waterloo and Toronto, although the universities of Waterloo, Toronto, McGill and l’Université de Montréal have since publicly disavowed future research engagements with Huawei. Federal signalling on Huawei thus appears to be working. Some institutions appear to be getting the message. Still, there is need for federal rigour and greater institutional responsibility, complemented by federal assistance and education.
Huawei, of course, is the world’s largest digital enabler of authoritarianism and human rights abuses on a vast scale. Although the current federal government finally banned Huawei equipment from Canadian telecommunications networks seven years into its mandate, it has been perfectly content to let Huawei continue its collaborations with Canadian public universities, using public research funding.
Testimony
Not to put too fine a point on it: the infiltration and cooptation of Canadian research by Chinese defence, intelligence, national security and dual-use technology entities is deep and vast. In some cases, Canadian institutions and researchers know full well that their Chinese interlocutors are highly problematic; in others they are unwitting participants.
Canadian tax dollars, public research funding, and public universities have for years been leveraged systematically to support and enable research and dual-use technology that benefits hostile authoritarian states, which in turn use it for grey-zone activities that aim to undermine Canada’s and allied democratic institutions, electoral processes, economic prosperity, national security, fundamental values, international and multilateral institutions, and so forth. The federal government purports to have a values-based foreign policy, yet for over 17 years its own research dollars and institutions have been used by hostile states to advance nefarious purposes that run counter to those very values!
This is not a random distribution problem. For China, for example, the problematic research partners and methods of infiltration and cooptation have been a matter of public record for at least five years, as have key areas of sensitive research.
At the same time, dithering by the federal government on a coherent and systematic approach and framework to contain this problem is anecdotally causing some scholars from being excluded from opportunities merely by virtue of a Chinese surname! So, contrary to the Prime Minister’s claims that government action might have racist consequences or overtones, it is precisely the government’s inaction that is having racist consequences by creating widespread uncertainty.
Conversely, any scholar who has family in China, who works with former colleagues in the PRC or who visits China would be vulnerable, as is naturally the case for most scholars with relations in China.
Although the focus of the committee is on the federal government’s role, this domain requires close and extensive collaboration among the federal government, provinces and research institutions, with robust and resolute federal leadership to ensure certainty and national coherence. To this end, the federal government must not succumb to the temptation to take the easy way out by taking a narrow approach. This would be a serious mistake. Only a comprehensive approach to research security will be effective and meaningful.
- Sensitive research areas. The government needs to flag high-risk research areas, notably in areas that could give rise to dual-use technology. Conspicuously absent from the motion that informs this committee’s set of hearings, for instance, is computing, or advanced materials manufacturing and critical minerals (which would capture research on Electric Vehicles).
- Country-agnostic. Once sensitive research areas have been identified, the approach should be country-agnostic and encompass not just China but hostile authoritarian regimes more broadly, including Russia and Iran.
- Listed entities. The government must muster the courage to list problematic entities, which includes about 200 Chinese institutions and companies, but also entities in Russia and Iran, for instance. Researchers must have clarity which affiliations are problematic.
- Identifying sensitive research areas, problematic countries, and actual entities shifts some of the burden for research security to the researcher, who should be required to certify in good faith that either none of these apply to the PI and application, or if they do to be required to submit a comprehensive research security plan that explains in detail the risks and mitigation strategies. An inadequate research security plan should be grounds for rejection for being non-responsive. Research security plans must exercise due diligence to ensure research does not end up being transferred into the wrong hands, and to provide additional safeguards for data such research generates. That should include annual compliance audits of researchers and research teams. Failure to comply should be reason to withhold Tri-Council funding not just to the researchers and project, but to the post-secondary institution.
- A broad, comprehensive vetting process. Instead of then looking only for direct or indirect (that is, in-kind) financial support for a project, a proper vetting process must look at a Principal Investigator’s collaborations holistically, notably that PI’s record of co-authored publications and other grants. Looking only at financial support on an application for a project will miss key problematic relationships. Arguments that the Charter somehow works against a comprehensive vetting is false and merely an excuse to avoid doing the right thing.
- The federal government has started to fund fund research security at Canadian universities. But there are two problems. One is that the formula used to calculate support, under the Government of Canada’s Research Support Fund, is problematic: Aurora College gets $256/year, Trent University $25,000, the University of Toronto $4.3 million. The is insufficient funding for Trent to hire a research officers on the one hand, but way too much more for the University of Toronto. Second, that efforts looks largely performative. The new university research officers have thus far received little guidance and are largely performing an administrative function. They require clear guidance on what to look for in potentially problematic research submissions, postdoctoral or fellowship affiliations, etc. See my recommendations above.
- Universities should be allowed and encouraged to put this new funding towards research, best practices and awareness in support of research security. Queen’s University, for instance, recently approved a new research centre that has a stated ancillary aim of supporting research security.
Although universities are open entities by their very nature and academic freedom is the sine qua non of university research, it is perfectly legitimate for the federal government to leverage Tri-Council funding and the relationship this funding affords with post-secondary institutions to steer universities away from an agnostic approach to an approach that is informed by research security, to ensure that Canadian research funding and institutions are not used in ways that could undermine Canada’s and allied national security, prosperity, and fundamental democratic values. The problem is that post-secondary institutions have little insights into national security; as such, it is incumbent on the federal government, as the entity that is best positioned to balance security intelligence with national interest, to provide proportionate, necessary, efficient and effective guidance on research security.
Christian Leuprecht is Professor at the Royal Military College of Canada and Queen’s University, and a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
