Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says it is “disconcerting” that a federal department awarded a contract to provide and maintain RCMP communications equipment to a company known to have ties with the Chinese regime.
Trudeau was referring to a CBC News
report published on Dec.7 saying that in October 2021 the federal government awarded a contract worth nearly $550,000 to Sinclair Technologies, an Ontario-based company controlled by China-based company Hytera Communications.
“I find it disconcerting that while parts of the government security agencies were advising us, as a government, and as Canadians, that we have to be very careful about foreign interference in our institutions—in our structures, in the way we do business and keep Canadians safe—that other parts of the civil service were signing contracts that have questionable levels of security for our operations and our national security institutions like the RCMP,” Trudeau told reporters while speaking at a press conference in Montreal on Dec. 7.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) owns about 10 percent of Hytera Communications through an investment fund, according to the CBC report. The United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
blacklisted Hytera last year, along with several other Chinese companies, saying it poses “an unacceptable risk” to U.S. national security.
The Canadian government contracted Sinclair Technologies
to provide the RCMP with a radio frequency filtering system that was designed, in part, to shield the federal police’s land-based radio communications from eavesdropping.
Trudeau said that the federal government will “absolutely” be investigating the contract.
“We’re going to be following up on this, finding out, first of all, what needs to be done to ensure that our communications technology is secure,” he said.
He added that the government must ensure going forward that federal departments are not “signing contracts with the lowest bidder that then turn around and leave us exposed to security flaws.”
“We will have some real questions for the independent public service that signed these contracts.”
‘China Strategy’
Former Canadian ambassador to China David Mulroney said today that the federal government has a “grab-bag ‘Indo-Pacific strategy,’” but that “we sure don’t have a China strategy.”“If we did, the [government] wouldn’t award sensitive contracts to PRC controlled firms that undercut their Canadian competitors. Our own brain-dead system makes Beijing’s job easier,” Mulroney wrote in a Twitter post on Dec. 7. Canada’s new Indo-Pacific Strategy, announced by Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly on Nov. 27, calls China “an increasingly disruptive global power” that “continues to challenge international norms.” Trudeau said in early November that China and other state actors are “continuing to play aggressive games with our institutions, with our democracies” after being faced with questions about alleged Chinese funding of candidates in the 2019 federal election. The federal government has also been questioned by opposition parties about its handling of alleged unofficial Chinese police stations operating in Canada.
“When did the government first become aware of their existence?” asked Conservative MP Michael Cooper on Dec. 5 in the House of Commons. “Why didn’t the government take any action to stop the establishment of these police stations?” The federal government has reiterated that the RCMP is investigating these reports. “The activity that’s being alleged, that is the police stations, would be entirely illegal, totally inappropriate, and would be the subject of very serious representation,” said the government’s Senate representative, Sen. Marc Gold, on Dec. 6.
