This article originally appeared in the Toronto Star.
By Charles Burton and Anthony Seaboyer, March 20, 2024
As U.S. legislators race to disconnect the world’s most downloaded app and prevent TikTok’s massive American data from potentially feeding Chinese security agencies, Ottawa should demonstrate equal resolve.
Canada’s Bill C-34 — proposed legislation to prevent foreign investors from harbouring foreign intelligence services — is in its home stretch of Senate review, before going to the House of Commons for final discussions.
The need to tighten up our laws (in this case The Investment Canada Act) was illustrated by Canada’s worst-ever security breach, when scientists Xiangguo Qiu and Keding Cheng were fired from Winnipeg’s National Microbiology Laboratory after sharing confidential data with Chinese military researchers.
Preventing states like China from purchasing influence in Canada requires strong, clear laws that limit or ban investments from authoritarian non-democratic regimes that target our democracy. In crafting security legislation, Ottawa must focus squarely on protection and not worry about reassuring the world that Canada is a trading nation open for business.
During Senate hearings, expert after expert (including both authors of this article) said Bill C-34’s outdated language will allow such states to keep infiltrating Canada, conducting espionage and collecting critical data.
In an age of weaponized information, protecting democracy means protecting data. Foreign influence campaigns rely on accurate information that adversary governments can obtain. The stronger their data, the better they can manipulate our attitudes or voting habits.
Buying up companies is one way they do this.
China has no private-sector commercial enterprises as we know them. Chinese corporations are required by law to support state intelligence services, including sharing proprietary information about foreign partners and customers. It’s why Washington wants to ban or force the sale of TikTok, whose owner is China-based.
Chinese companies trying to be profitable are sometimes ordered to incorporate spyware into products, then dump them in overseas markets at prices below production cost. Executives reluctant to comply are typically fired for disloyalty to the state, and often “disappear.” In the past year, over a dozen prominent business leaders have vanished. In China, this is business as usual. Some companies keep contingency public relations plans on hand, in case their CEO disappears.
When Chinese investors acquire foreign companies, they’re opening a door for spying. In every Canadian business bought by Chinese money, Beijing establishes a Chinese Communist Party committee — operating in Canada. With every acquisition, the reach of Chinese intelligence services expands. Those Chinese “police stations” operating in Canada were just the tip of the iceberg.
Beijing’s intelligence services harvest the data of Canadians to feed AI-enabled apps that precisely guide barely detectable Chinese influence campaigns in Canada.
Sometimes, spyware can be the very products we buy. Consider inexpensive Chinese EVs flooding global markets, and which could come to Canada through collaborations with domestic distributors.
Modern automobiles are loaded with sensors that collect data every second — not just about the car and its occupants, but nearby licence plates or people on streets through facial recognitions apps. Advanced apps process this data in near real time, giving foreign intelligence services instant knowledge of who goes where, and when.
With complex technologies constantly evolving, one way of protecting Canadians from sophisticated foreign influence is to stop authoritarian undemocratic regimes from corporate acquisitions in Canada.
C-34, for instance, currently includes a classified (read: secret) review process that allows discretionary rulings by cabinet ministers. Regardless of which party is in government at any given time, this step is clearly vulnerable to foreign persuasion and interference. Canadians need open, transparent processes in determining which investments are accepted and which are denied or have strict conditions attached.
Transparency and accountability go hand in hand. Although the 2019 Winnipeg lab incident is officially under RCMP investigation, no charges were ever laid, and this week it was reported that Xiangguo Qiu is back in China working alongside military researchers.
Concealed behind the fog of secrecy, those responsible will apparently get off Scot free. This is the wrong approach for protecting our democracy.
Charles Burton is senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute; non-resident senior fellow of the European Values Center for Security Policy in Prague; and former diplomat at Canada’s embassy in Beijing.
Anthony Seaboyer teaches political science and political philosophy at the Royal Military College of Canada.
