The letter to this committee signed by William Ghali on May 9, 2023, says:
When asked by Mr. Mazier—Does UCalgary continue to work with Huawei at this time—my response was no, because we are not at present embarking on any new projects. What I overlooked in providing that answer was that there are three existing projects with Huawei established in prior years. Those three projects will not be interrupted by the university....
I am personally troubled to know that the University of Calgary failed to provide accurate information to this committee in their initial response. This situation is quite troubling and should be examined, because now we know the answer on whether they continue to work with Huawei is a not a no, but in fact a yes.
Furthermore, this committee received a written response from the University of British Columbia. This was to follow up on my question in a letter, and the reply says, “UBC's research agreements with Huawei Technologies Canada have evolved over time reflecting guidance from federal partners.”
However, the five-page letter mentions multiple partnerships with Huawei over the years.
It's not only the University of British Columbia and the University of Calgary that are actively working with Huawei. When Mr. Jim Hinton, an intellectual property lawyer, appeared at this committee, he said, “CSIS is actively monitoring Canadian research institutions for IP transfer and reviewing ties to the foreign government actors.” He also said, “There are at least 20 Canadian universities that have been working with Huawei.”
He went on to say:
Canadian universities are getting money. I think they have around $3.34 billion in federal funding and Huawei would be one of the beneficiaries of this funding.
Huawei has been able to generate hundreds of patents out of Canadian universities over the years.
When I asked Mr. Hinton if the current government has done anything to guarantee that the government research funding is not being used to develop intellectual property for Huawei or for the entities that CSIS warned against, he stated:
No, it's the opposite. There are incentive programs through NSERC to encourage Canadian universities to partner with organizations like Huawei. There's nothing stopping a researcher or a university from continuing to work with those organizations. As we've seen, they'll continue to do that unless somebody steps up and says we need to reconsider this.
This is a very serious matter. I would argue that this is the most pressing matter for this committee. Our top intelligence agency is sounding the alarm on this. It appears that there is little being done to address this situation.
I asked Dr. Chad Gaffield, the executive officer of the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities, how many of these universities that he represents continue to work with Huawei after receiving briefings and warnings from CSIS. He failed to provide a clear answer. He said he did not have this information on hand. He failed to commit to provide this information to the committee when I asked him.
I believe this committee deserves to know these answers. I believe that we should pursue these answers.
I will also draw the committee's attention to recent reports that the University of Waterloo advised researchers that they aren't obligated to speak to CSIS.
Why would the University of Waterloo advise researchers that they don't have to speak to our country's top security officials? This is a question that needs to be answered.
I also want to draw the committee's attention to the report that was tabled in the House of Commons two weeks ago by the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations. In the report, there was an important recommendation:
That the Government of Canada advise provincial governments, as well as Canadian universities and research institutions, about the threats from the People's Republic of China to national security and intellectual property. The advice should include explicit guidance against research partnerships and collaboration with universities, entities, and researchers from the People's Republic of China in the five sensitive areas identified by CSIS (artificial intelligence, quantum technology, 5G, biopharma, clean tech). The Government of Canada should also conduct ongoing [research] and provide resources to assist universities and research institutions in developing robust mechanisms to protect national security and intellectual property, while respecting academic freedom and institutional autonomy.
All MPs on this committee supported this recommendation.
Furthermore, I will draw the committee's attention to recommendation 6 in the same report. Recommendation 6 was the following:
That the Government of Canada, through a ministerial policy directive, ban the federal granting councils from funding research connected with universities, entities and researchers from the PRC in five sensitive areas identified by CSIS.
All MPs on the committee supported this too.
I think it's extremely important that this committee study this matter, hear from expert witnesses and report its findings to the House of Commons. It is timely, it is relevant and it's important. No other committee is better suited to examine this specific issue to an extensive degree. This specific issue deserves to be studied in detail.
As a member of this committee, I think it is extremely important that we hear from the director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. I think it is important that we hear from the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, along with his department officials. I think it's important that we hear from the top research officials from Canadian universities and the federal granting agencies, because this is a pressing matter impacting science and research in Canada.
I will remind this committee of Mr. Hinton's testimony on the importance of looking into this matter.
When he last appeared at the Standing Committee on Science and Research, on April 18, 2022, he stated the following on the matter:
If you look at the list of IP that's coming out of Canadian universities, it's being assigned to organizations like Huawei. It's artificial intelligence, it's photonics, and it's advanced processing. Somebody needs to understand this, and we need to get to the bottom of it.
There's a transparency issue here. We don't know who or what is being done with Canadian publicly funded research, and there are egregious examples that we need to make sure are not happening. There are policies in place, but the fox is in charge of the henhouse. The researcher who wants to get the money is the one checking the boxes to say that there is no issue here.
I don't know how much louder the alarm needs to sound before the government takes this issue seriously. This is an issue that has been relevant for many years, and the significance and the importance of the study are only becoming greater.
I am going to quote an article published by the Globe and Mail on October 30, 2018, entitled “Foreign espionage of Canadian research a risk to 'national Interests,' CSIS warns”. The article reads as follows, and I quote:
Canada's spy service is warning that Canadian research is “of interest to foreign states,” whose exploitation of such work poses potential harm to “Canada's national interests.”
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service...said on Tuesday that it routinely meets with universities to warn them of risks. The Globe and Mail reported this week that at least nine Canadian postsecondary institutions have conducted joint studies in recent years with researchers from Chinese military institutions, including the People's Liberation Army Information Engineering University, China's Air Defence College and the elite National University of Defense Technology. In general, Canadian university policies require joint research to be published openly.
The collaborations, however, have raised concern that Canada's academic establishment has become a target for Chinese intelligence-gathering, as Beijing conducts a sweeping technological modernization of its armed forces. Some Chinese defence scientists working with Canadian scholars have used the names of what appear to be non-existent civilian institutions rather than citing their military credentials in joint publications. Collaborative work with Canada has included advances in secure communications and satellite-image processing, technologies that have civilian and military value.
A report this week by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute found three Canadian universities among the global top 10 in publishing joint research with Chinese military scholars. The institute tabulated 687 academic papers co-authored by Canadian academics with Chinese defence researchers.
The article continues:
Universities said federal authorities determine which foreign researchers are allowed into Canada.
“We rely on the Government of Canada to evaluate security considerations in offering study permits,” University of Calgary spokesman Drew Scherban said in a statement. The university “is committed to academic freedom and does not regulate the areas of research pursued by its faculty or graduate students,” he said.
But the Canadian political establishment has had little to say about the issue—including Minister of Public Safety Ralph Goodale, who on Tuesday did not mention China or Canadian universities, saying in response to a question in Ottawa that he would not discuss what he called “operational details.”
“We have organizations such as the RCMP and CSIS—our police and security organizations—that are very alert to every kind of risk that could threaten Canadians and they take all the necessary steps to investigate those risks and make sure that Canadians are kept safe,” Mr. Goodale said.
Canada's spy agency, however, was more forthcoming.
Universities are among the institutions CSIS routinely meets “to advise them of potential threats to the security and interests of Canada, and to provide unclassified briefings regarding the nature of specific threats,” spokesman John Townsend said in a statement.
“Canadian industry and academic institutions are world leaders in various economic, technological and research sectors that are of interest to foreign states. These states seek to acquire Canadian technology and expertise by utilizing a range of traditional and non-traditional intelligence collection tradecraft,” he added.
Such “covert exploitation,” he said, “may come at the expense of Canada's national interests, including lost jobs and revenues, and a diminished competitive global advantage.”
In the United States, the Department of Justice on Tuesday warned that Chinese intelligence agents used hackers and “co-opted company insiders” to pilfer aerospace industrial technologies. Several people referred to as Chinese intelligence officers and their co-conspirators were charged.
“The threat posed by Chinese government-sponsored hacking activity is real and relentless,” John Brown, FBI special agent in charge of the San Diego field office, said in a statement.
That's the end of article. These are not my words. These are words of experts.
I would also like to draw to the committee's attention an article published by The Globe and Mail on August 6, 2020, entitled “CSIS warns about China's efforts to recruit Canadian scientists”. The article reads as follows, and I quote:
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has warned the country's universities and research institutions that Beijing is using academic recruitment programs such as its Thousand Talents Plan to attract scientists to China in hopes of obtaining cutting-edge science and technology for economic and military advantage.
The federal spy agency says the Thousand Talents Plan (TTP), which Beijing created in 2008 to identify and recruit leading scientific experts around the globe, is an example of the way China is attempting to get academics to share—either willingly or by coercion—the results of work conducted and financed in Canada so that China doesn’t have to rely only on traditional intelligence-gathering.
John Townsend, the head of CSIS’s media relations, said in a statement to The Globe and Mail that some countries looking to acquire sensitive Canadian technologies and expertise use this non-traditional method of intelligence-collection: recruiting academics who will provide what a hostile state wants, or could be compelled to do so through offers of reward or threat of punishment.
“Academic talent plans are one way to incentivize academics to participate in such activities. While the Thousand Talents Plan is one example, academic talent plans are used by multiple hostile states by other names.”
I want to repeat that article again, because it is a pretty important part of the whole motion.
John Townsend, the head of CSIS's media relations, said in a statement to The Globe and Mail that some countries looking to acquire sensitive Canadian technologies and expertise use this non-traditional method of intelligence-collection: recruiting academics who will provide what a hostile state wants, or could be compelled to do so through offers of reward or threat of punishment.
I don't know if anybody got that. I'll read it again just in case no one got that:
John Townsend, the head of CSIS's media relations, said in a statement to The Globe and Mail that some countries looking to acquire sensitive Canadian technologies and expertise use this non-traditional method of intelligence-collection: recruiting academics who will provide what a hostile state wants, or could be compelled to do so through offers of reward or threat of punishment.
“Academic talent plans are one way to incentivize academics to participate in such activities. While the Thousand Talents Plan is one example, academic talent plans are used by multiple hostile states by other names.”
I'll read that again:
“Academic talent plans are one way to incentivize academics to participate in such activities. While the Thousand Talents Plan is one example, academic talent plans are used by multiple hostile states by other names.”
Mr. Townsend was replying to a question from The Globe about whether CSIS has national security concerns over the Thousand Talents Plan, which recently has become the focus of scrutiny for U.S. law enforcement and Congress.
He said CSIS has spoken to universities and other research institutions about its concerns over this and other foreign recruitment programs after evidence of technology transfer emerged in recent years.
The Globe has found at least 15 Canadian academics who have participated in the Chinese program, including experts in quantum computing, advanced electronics and engineering, vaccines, chemistry and artificial intelligence. All the scholars contacted by The Globe defended the program as mutually beneficial for Canada and China, and said they did not encounter any untoward conduct during their involvement.
The Chinese program provides salaries, research funds, lab space at universities in China and other incentives. A 2016 report by the Conference Board of Canada said TTP funding can be as high as $335,000 for start-up, plus up to $168,000 remuneration per annum. International professors also receive “preferential treatment in terms of medical care, housing, and for foreign nationals, permanent residency and multi-entry visas,” the report said.
China stopped publishing the names of people who have participated in the program in September, 2018, after the U.S. Justice Department began investigating allegations that some scientists illicitly provided China with technology and high-level research funded by U.S. federal agencies.
I think that is probably the most alarming thing about this, Mr. Chair, and I'll repeat this so that everybody hears this.
China stopped publishing the names of people who have participated in the program in September, 2018, after the U.S. Justice Department began investigating allegations that some scientists illicitly provided China with technology and high-level research funded by U.S. federal agencies.
In November, 2019, a U.S. Senate report, “Threats to the U.S. Research Enterprise: China's Talent Recruitment Plans”, described the Chinese programs as a campaign to recruit talent and foreign experts to benefit China's economic and military development.
The Senate report says participants in the Thousand Talents Plan are asked to sign contracts that require them not to disclose that Chinese institutions will retain the rights to at least some of the intellectual property created by the U.S. researchers.
This is what everybody's not talking about.
“The contracts can incentivize members to lie [about their participation in TTP] on grant applications to U.S. grant-making agencies, set up 'shadow labs' in China working on research identical to their U.S. research, and, in some cases, transfer U.S. scientists' hard-earned intellectual capital,” the Senate report said.
The report estimated that China has more than 200 academic recruitment programs. CSIS’s Mr. Townsend said underhanded efforts to acquire sensitive Canadian technologies and expertise hurt Canada.
“These corrosive tactics, which are done to advance the economic and strategic objectives of hostile states, come at the expense of Canada’s national interest, including lost jobs, revenue for public services and a diminished competitive global advantage,” Mr. Townsend said. “While I cannot discuss specific investigations, I can say that CSIS actively investigates all threats of foreign interference and espionage.”
Canada’s spy agency warned in May that Canadian academics and corporations are at increased risk of espionage or intellectual property theft as agents of China and Russia target research related to COVID-19.
Canadian academics say their Thousand Talents work in China can benefit Canada, helping them identify top Chinese graduate students who can be recruited to come here—at the expense of their own government—and contribute to scientific research.
Andreas Mandelis, professor and researcher at the University of Toronto’s department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, enlisted as a Thousand Talents scholar with the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu from 2013 to 2018. He helped build a laboratory there that mirrored facilities at the University of Toronto. He still visits—accommodation and travel expenses paid—to meet and collaborate with scholars.
Prof. Mandelis said academics are treated exceptionally well in China.
I will now pass the floor over to my fellow MP.
