International Trade Committee on Dec. 1st, 2025

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I’d like to thank the witnesses for joining us. I’d also like to thank them for their presentations.

My first question will be open-ended.

Mr. Worry, you’ve already told us outside this committee about China’s practices, some of which are questionable. You said Chinese state subsidies make it impossible for Canadian and Quebec producers to match their low prices.

As part of the CUSMA review, how can we get to some kind of common framework for North America to push back against these practices?

[Michael Worry]

That's an excellent question. Nuvation has been selling battery management systems for 18 years, and we've always been more expensive than China, but it's been, perhaps, 30% more expensive. What has happened is really shifted in the last two years. In 2024, China dramatically dropped its pricing on battery cells, battery management systems, power conversion systems, everything, way below manufacturing costs. In a span of 12 months, pricing dropped 60% or 70% on a lot of these components. That is way below manufacturing efficiencies. These are people who are purchasing access to a market.

As we've been speaking with government officials about this, we originally were having conversations around tariffs or ability to protect it. What we have found, actually, is that, in both the U.S. and Canada, people tell us that there's no price where this is safe, so it's not a tariff situation. It's a situation where we just need to ban these foreign adversary electronics and prioritize domestic suppliers.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC]

That’s on trade iniquity.

Let us now turn to security and the security of the American electricity grid. That component counts.

Does that warrant prohibiting technologies from outside North America in such a context because of some of the Chinese practices that we are aware of?

[Michael Worry]

Yes, we believe we need to prioritize domestic suppliers with allied nations. Really, supply chain security is about banning foreign adversaries or bad actors who might have a motivation in order to do bad things with these electronics. As an electrical engineer, I believe that if you take an electronic device and put it in a different enclosure or put a different label on it and weight label it, it doesn't change the underlying risk of those electronics. That's one of the things that we're concerned about. We're seeing electronics coming from foreign adversaries, where a small change is made on them, and then there's a false sense of security that it is labelled as a made-in-Canada product, when in actuality, the risk profile of that product is unchanged.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC]

To your knowledge, do we have enough information? Do we have the necessary data?

Do we have enough details to fully understand the unfair practices of other countries, in the clean technology sector in particular?

Do we have any documentation or measures? Obviously, the goal is to measure and to counter these practices.

Do we have the necessary tools or should we develop others? If so, which ones?

[Michael Worry]

That’s a good question.

If we look at other places that have advanced on this, Ontario has already done Bill 5 and Bill 40, which give us good guidance on what we can do as Canadians in order to protect ourselves from foreign adversaries. We can also look at the U.S. In our government relations work in the U.S., we're up to 12 states now that have varying levels of laws that either restrict or ban foreign adversary electronics in energy storage or more generally in U.S. infrastructure.

We can be a fast follower on this, because a number of states and provinces have already helped us write legislative language in order to do what we need to do here.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC]

In 2026, the CUSMA agreement will be reviewed and revised. A genuine common North American strategy on critical minerals should be established. Of course, the issue of North American economic and geopolitical security is linked to this.

I know it’s difficult to address that in the current climate of Canada-U.S. rivalry and the trade conflict, as the relationship is incredibly complex.

That said, how can we have common rules of origin that would enhance Canada-U.S. co-operation?

Is it possible to establish certain thresholds for regional content as part of a North American strategy for transformation and refining, for example?

[Michael Worry]

That’s an excellent question.

What we see is that the high risk is really in the electronics. This is in hardware and software. Most of the legislative work we've done is in that direction. If you get down to rare minerals, which is also a very key issue, those are low-risk components. From where I sit, in a role of supply chain security, we don't need to be worried about electronic backdoors hidden in raw minerals, because they're fundamental elements. When we get up to semiconductors, processors and memory code, this is where electronic backdoors can exist. That's the level at which we believe this needs to be legislated.

As engineers, we believe that where something is designed is more important than where it is manufactured. To your point about what we should do inside CUSMA, I think we need to look at rules around where these electronics were designed. If they come into Canada and they get put in a different box with a different label on it, that doesn't change where those electronics were designed. It does not in any way change the risk profile.

That would be my recommendation to CUSMA: Look at where these electronics were designed. We actually have a whole risk matrix profile that Nuvation helped develop. I co-chair a cybersecurity committee inside NAATBatt. We help develop regulations and guidelines on how to measure where things are designed, and the risk that comes with that, rather than where something is manufactured, because there's moderate incremental risk with that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC]

Madam Chair, may I ask the witness to table the report in question, if possible, as part of the committee’s study?

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I'm sorry. I didn't—

[Michael Worry]

There's a risk matrix table that I'd be happy to provide.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

If you could supply that to the committee, yes, that would be very helpful.

Mr. McKenzie, go ahead, please. You have five minutes.

[David McKenzie, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Picking up on this conversation, Mr. Worry, I'm just wondering about the extent of the installed equipment. You mentioned some critical components. The fascinating part for me is that everything that's critical is critical because it's critical—backup power systems for hospitals, for instance. I mean, these are some of the most important installations we have. At this point in time, would most of this installed equipment be at risk?

[Michael Worry]

That's one of our recommendations: Do an assessment of existing installed equipment. Though we did list that as a later recommendation, we think really the key point is that we need to stop increasing the risk. We need to stop inviting potential thieves into our homes.

If you think about it, fundamentally, you lock your house when you leave. If someone's outside, they have to break in, and that's hard. That's how our firewalls are designed and how our networks are designed. If you invite a thief in and leave them in your house and then leave, it's relatively easy for them to take whatever they want and walk out the front door.

That's what we're doing today, and we need to stop that practice.

[David McKenzie, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

We're already some period of time behind.

[Michael Worry]

We are.

[David McKenzie, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

You mentioned the time frame in which prices were dropped dramatically. That's a subsidy effect in order to penetrate the market. That's an intentional tactic, I think, by various bad actors globally. How long have we been subject to that?

[Michael Worry]

It's been two years. This started in 2024.

[David McKenzie, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

You mentioned that some U.S. states have in place, or have begun to put into place, legislation to address this. There's some awareness of this in the U.S. Your company is present there as well.

[Michael Worry]

Yes. We also have operations in the U.S. I've been to Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., three times. I'll be there again next week. There is strong bipartisan support for this issue. There is a lot of concern in the U.S. around foreign adversaries in China. There are so many examples of what's going on there.

On 60 Minutes recently, they talked about how it's gone down to the level of Littleton, this little town of 10,000 people. China was caught hacking into the water supply of a little town of 10,000 people. There's no economic value here. There's no intellectual property here. This would only be done in order to set themselves up to later take advantage of that situation. That's the concern here. We continue to invite the CCP—

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I'm sorry. I hate to interrupt, because this is valuable testimony, but we have a translation problem.

Please give us a second.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

All right.

Mr. McKenzie, I'll give you back a little bit of extra time.

[David McKenzie, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I was going to ask if you wanted me to take it from the top, but three minutes will be more than sufficient. Thank you.

I'm sorry for that interruption, Mr. Worry. These things do happen.

You were just talking about Littleton, where there was some interference. That sounds to me like a practice run.

[Michael Worry]

That's correct. Yes, that's what we're seeing. Littleton was one of some 200 sites that were found like that in the U.S. This is the CCP practising and positioning themselves in order to in the future take advantage of that access in the event of a crisis or conflict.