Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has vowed to review a contract awarded to a Beijing-linked firm to supply and maintain federal police radio equipment, citing possible security concerns.
The half-million dollar contract for a radio frequency filtering system to prevent eavesdropping went to Canada’s Sinclair Technologies, which is controlled by China’s Hytera Communications.
The Shenzen-based company is partly owned by the Chinese government and blacklisted by the United States – raising concerns about potential Chinese access to Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) communications.
“I find it disconcerting,” Trudeau told a news conference on the sidelines of a biodiversity conference in Montreal co-hosted by Canada and China.
He noted that while Canadian security agencies have warned about “foreign interference in our institutions and our structures”, here officials are “signing contracts that have questionable levels of security for our operations and our national security institutions like the RCMP.”
“We’re going to be following up on this,” he vowed, promising to ensure that communications technology used by the government and its agencies is secure.
The government must also “make sure that Canada is not signing contracts with the lowest bidder that then turn around and leave us exposed to security flaws”, he said.
The US Federal Communications Commission banned Hytera in 2021, saying it was among several Chinese firms that pose a national security risk. Huawei is on the same US list, and has been banned by Canada too.
Hytera also faces accusations – which it denies – of conspiring to steal trade secrets from US telecommunications company Motorola Solutions.
A Public Services and Procurement Canada spokesperson said the department did not take security concerns and Sinclair’s ownership into consideration during the bidding process, Radio-Canada reported.
In a written statement, Martine Cardozo, sales director for Sinclair Technologies, said the company was independently registered and operating in Canada and its products were trusted by public safety experts globally.
The RCMP also said it was confident that the system, which was already being installed, would remain secure.
However, opposition conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said it was “astonishing” that the deal took place and insisted that the contract must be cancelled.
“It is astonishing to me that Justin Trudeau’s contracting system would have allowed a company whose parent owner in the United States is charged with 21 different espionage offences, to install technology on our police force’s system in order to block espionage,” he said outside the House of Commons on Wednesday.
“I mean, it’s almost something that you’d expect to be out of a spy novel, but characters in spy novels would never be that incompetent,” he added.
Public safety minister Marco Mendicino said he had instructed his staff to look closely at the contract and the process by which it was awarded.
“We’re eyes wide open about the threats that are posed by hostile state and non-state actors,” Mendicino said after a Liberal caucus meeting on Wednesday.
“One of the reasons why we put in place a process that looks at the potential opportunities, or vectors, for foreign interference in the context of contracts is to secure Canadian national interest, to secure our national security.”
With Agence France-Presse
