Thank you, Chair and honourable members of the Standing Committee on Science and Research. I had the opportunity to speak with you earlier this year, and it is again an honour to present to you today.
I'm an IP lawyer, patent agent and trademark agent with my firm, Own Innovation. I'm also a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, where I study innovation and intellectual property policy. I also teach innovation and IP commercialization strategies at Western University in London, Ontario.
I express gratitude to the committee for studying this important topic. Security and control of Canadian research is a matter of national security as well as national economic prosperity. The value of Canadian research is controlled by intellectual property and physical restriction. Whether we protect our research or not, countries are using it to advance their national agendas.
Today, we are talking about what happens when foreign actors use our technology and IP to put our national security at risk. Canadian research institutions—our universities—are some of Canada's most sacrosanct institutions; however, these institutions have been compromised. According to public reports, 50 Canadian universities have conducted extensive research with China's military since 2005.
Huawei has partnered with over 20 of Canada's research institutions. Huawei has received intellectual property from the University of Waterloo, the University of Toronto, McGill University, the University of British Columbia, the University of Calgary, the University of Ottawa, Université Laval, Institut national de la recherche scientifique, Carleton University, Polytechnique Montréal, Western University, the University of Regina and McMaster University. I am naming these names so that there is no longer a veil of secrecy in these deals.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Significant public funding, millions of dollars and resources are being used. Hundreds of patents have been generated for Huawei through these deals. The commercial rights go to Huawei, and they can use this technology in any manner they want. Canadians are legally prohibited from practising these technologies. These are not one-off instances. This is a systematic exfiltration of Canadian publicly funded assets to an organization that now isn't even allowed in Canada's telecommunications systems.
The federal government, through programs like the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, NSERC, not only has been complicit in these arrangements but has been incentivizing this behaviour. While there has been a recent shift in the approach because of the increasing public outcry, it has been entirely reactionary. NSERC has been funding Huawei research projects since at least 2010, and despite some changes, Canadian universities and researchers can still work with Huawei. They just may no longer be incentivized to do so.
I propose the following recommendations, modelled from global best practices in the United States, Australia and other jurisdictions.
The first is transparency. We need to know who is working with Canadian research institutions and how much they have been benefiting. We really don't know the extent of the relationship or its impacts. We also need to know what this technology has been used for, particularly for dual-use technologies that may have commercial uses as well as nefarious purposes. Universities receiving public funding must track and report the flow of research and development efforts with annual and concrete disclosure, including how much and whom they are working with.
The second is proactive and not reactive policy. The fox is in charge of the henhouse. The universities and researchers themselves are in many cases tasked to self-report potential national security issues, but they are in an inherent conflict of interest. We must properly resource and incentivize universities to work with Canada's intelligence community to be up to date on the latest intelligence and understand challenges to proactively manage relationships for Canadian benefit. Consider legislation like what Australia has adopted to review and, if necessary, to cancel international agreements made by universities.
Finally, we need to retain strategic Canadian intellectual property and data assets. We need to stop doing these terrible deals, end them now and make sure we don't get into the same problem again. Also, we need to continuously update technologies of strategic importance. Economic and security risks are not separate issues. Intellectual property and data assets for artificial intelligence, quantum, photonics, biotech and aerospace are dual-use technologies that have both economic and national security value. Any assessment of risk and net benefit needs to include both the economic value and the security risks.
China sees our universities as strategic IP generators for its military and its firms, but it's not just China. It's also the Americans. It may also be Russia or Iran. The federal government needs to take control of the situation and ensure that publicly funded intellectual property and data assets benefit Canadians, not foreign militaries.
Thank you, and I look forward to the discussion.