Science and Research Committee on Sept. 20th, 2023

[Benjamin Fung]

Yes. Several years ago, they were much more active, and many activities like engineering and computer science were directly sponsored by Huawei. They were making some unreasonable requests to some of their activities' organizers. Recently, I've seen that the students basically reject that sponsorship.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

But nothing directly with you.... I don't want you to expand on the Huawei connection with other professors or students, but with regard to your example, after you—

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Actually, we're just at time now.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Can I have 20 seconds?

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

No, we're at time.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you.

Thank you for the answers as well.

Now we'll turn it over to Charles Sousa, from the Liberals, for six minutes, please.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and colleagues. I won't be on this committee going forward, but I do want to express my thanks to all of you for our discussions and debates.

I do want to thank the witnesses for being here today and coming forward.

I have two questions. I'll start, if I may, with Professor Houlden.

As you've mentioned, Professor, this is a rather complex issue. It is important that the research ecosystem be as open as possible and as secure as necessary. Our government, certainly, has been working towards improving research security in Canada for some time. In 2021, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada released its “National Security Guidelines for Research Partnerships”. This took aim at supporting researchers “to integrate national security considerations into the development, evaluation, and funding of research partnerships.”

Can you reaffirm some of your concerns, then, with how we proceed to limit the extent of collaboration with certain countries, to be agnostic yet at the same time provide for research that is open and allows us to benefit from the degree of expertise that exists in other parts of the world?

[Gordon Houlden]

Well, resources and time are always limited.

My point would be that I'm not sure you can always be agnostic. It's pretty clear that the PRC, North Korea, Iran and Russia pose risks that others do not. Hence, I'd argue that focusing on the most immediate problems is rational.

Our collaboration with China is for a bunch of reasons, mainly the fact that the Chinese have advanced so quickly and so far. China will probably occupy the lion's share. I'm not aware of any research collaboration with North Korea, for example. There's virtually none with Iran and very little with Russia in the current circumstances. I think you have to pick your targets.

The challenge is that one must, in my view, respect the academic autonomy of universities. Where there's a legitimate security concern—and there are legitimate security concerns—is where the Government of Canada legitimately focuses. When it has the funding control, it should certainly exercise it where it believes it's not in the net interest.

I would emphasize that there are research topics—be it climate change, environmental concerns or health research—where there is clear benefit to Canada from our researchers' working with Chinese researchers. If you cut that off completely, then one of the things you're going to find is that some of our best researchers will simply decamp to the U.S. or Europe, where there are no such barriers or where at least the barriers may be somewhat more liberal. Working with our allies to find common approaches reduces that risk.

There's also the bigger issue of isolating China. China went through very long periods historically, including up to the end of the cultural revolution.... The movement of students back and forth, I think, helps to leaven and open Chinese society. The Chinese students I deal with on a regular basis are far more knowledgeable of the outside world and outside ways of living than was the case before.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you for that.

Now I want to turn it over to Professor Fung and Ms. Wong.

This is obviously a very serious issue. What you've highlighted today in terms of the security threat and what is not a threat.... You've actually identified and have said that there's interference being engaged at this moment by some of your colleagues who are targets, as you have also been. That's a very serious issue.

I've also heard—from members of the diaspora, members of the Chinese community and others who are students and so forth—that there's some degree of concern and worry about racism, discrimination and some biases against certain researchers of Chinese origin. As a consequence, many are calling for a full boycott. They're calling for what seems like maybe an ineffective method, but some are saying to cut everything and not to deal with certain individuals from China.

Can you elaborate on how you balance the innocent students who are coming here, who really want to do their best and who have good intentions with this concern about undue influence and undue harm?

[Cherie Wong]

I think what you mean by a country-agnostic solution is the start of an anti-racist approach in addressing national security concerns when it comes to academia. As I said, there is also other regime security in academia that Beijing is interested in advancing.

I think that, for one thing, we need to look at the conduct of the companies, individuals and entities we collaborate with. For example, if an entity seeking to collaborate with a Canadian researcher is actively violating international human rights law, then that should be a signal that maybe we shouldn't collaborate with that individual. That's what I mean by looking at the conduct rather than the country of origin.

Another issue, when it comes to international collaboration, is that there are privacy laws and data laws that are different from Canada's, so we can collaborate with a Chinese actor who has obtained data legally in China, but the way they obtained the data may not be legal in Canada. That then creates this kind of moral grey area in which we have to ask whether it is ethical for Canadian researchers to continue to collaborate with this individual, who has obtained data possibly through means that are not legal in Canada but that would be elsewhere. How would that research data be stored? Is it stored in China or is it stored in Canada?

All of those factors come into play when we talk about how to balance that act of academic freedom to ensure there is free and transparent collaboration, in which researchers are empowered and acknowledge—

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you very much.

We'll now turn it over to Maxime Blanchette-Joncas for six minutes.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to welcome the witnesses who are joining us today.

My first question is for you, Professor Houlden.

There is no doubting your experience, since you've been working in Canadian foreign affairs since 1976. You also talked about your tenure at the University of Alberta.

I want to make sure I understand the situation, and I want to make sure my colleagues and the public understand it, too. On a scale of 1 to 10, how concerned should we be about Chinese interference in Canada's scientific research ecosystem?

[Gordon Houlden]

Thank you very much for the question and the kind comments.

On a scale of one to 10, I would presume.... Here again, I would say you have to look at the national issues. The risks of research collaboration with the United States or France are not the same as with China or Russia. I'm not sure that the agnostic approach fully works. I would assign to the case of China probably about an eight, but that does not mean that the door is closed or should be closed; it means care is needed.

I would recommend this excellent report from MIT. It came out in November of last year. They had nine eminent scholars and they took almost 18 months, I think, to write the report. It's available online. There's one line that jumped out at me and it is as follows:

But we believe that the United States has more to lose than gain if broad, sweeping restrictions on academic research are implemented that degrade or dismantle the U.S. system of open science.

This is an organization that, in the same document, talks about classified labs that work for the Department of Defense and that are basically locked to all foreigners. You can walk and chew gum at the same time. You can do essential, useful, meaningful research, collaboration on health and environment with China. You can also try to keep that door tightly locked on sensitive technology.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Professor Houlden.

I understand the nuance you're making about competitiveness and the mitigation of national security risks. I want to hear more about that.

Margaret McCuaig‑Johnston, a senior official at the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, NSERC, said that we should have a set of rules that would apply in scientific collaborations, including with researchers from authoritarian regimes like China and Russia. So it would be a differentiated approach.

What do you think of an approach like that? Also, what criteria should guide the categorization of countries?

[Gordon Houlden]

Thank you very much.

Yes, Margaret McCuaig‑Johnston previously served as a senior fellow of the China Institute at the University of Alberta. I know her well.

I think that clearly a category one would include our NATO allies and those closest to us, where there's no risk. There is a group of independent democratic countries, largely in Europe but in other continents as well, with which I think concerns are modest, and then there are the countries where, because of their size—in the case of China—and radically different political systems, non-democratic, with larger militaries, caution is more warranted.

That's on a national basis, but even within that, you'll have to differentiate between the types of research. It's quite feasible that a Canadian researcher might be working with a German researcher who, unbeknownst to the Canadian researcher, has a Chinese partner, so caution is needed as well. If I were the Canadian researcher, I would ask, “Who are your partners? Who else are you working with?” Once it's leaked from that lab in Canada or from the intellectual property of the individual, it's harder to control where it goes. However, there are issues of health, child health, aging, biodiversity, where it is clear that it's in the planet's interest, as well as China's and Canada's, that we collaborate and advance.

That's where there has to be this differentiation, not just on the country, but also on the subject matter, where governments, universities and researchers have categories of high risk, medium risk and no risk, and where the no risk category may have great benefit for all parties.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you very much, Professor.

You mentioned earlier that, on a scale of 1 to 10, our level of concern about Chinese interference in science in Canada should be 8.

Based on your expertise, can you tell us how Canada compares to other G7 and OECD countries in terms of national security for research partnerships?

[Gordon Houlden]

Well, I think things are evolving very quickly. I could say the Americans have been in the lead, in the sense of identifying risks and dealing with them. They have the most to protect, be it in the military or science or technology, and they have very large national institutions. But again, in Washington, from meeting with eight different individuals from various agencies, I know they have also worked very carefully to respect the autonomy of universities, to have a very light touch when possible.

They believe, as I believe, that there are too few North Americans studying in China. We need to understand that place. It's going to be a dominant part of the 21st century. We ought to have more researchers there. Many of these people can go without risk, depending on what the subject matter is. Again, if it's investigations of paleontology, there's zero risk, but you gain a knowledge of how the Chinese work and think. The French and Germans have just woken up to the risk.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you.

I wish we could go on, but just to balance time fairly, I'm going to turn to Richard Cannings from the NDP, please.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you.

Thanks to all the witnesses for being here today.

I'm going to start with Ms. Wong and her comment about this country-agnostic approach. After listening to Mr. Houlden, I'm wondering if maybe it's a bit of semantics that is the difference here. I assume that by “country-agnostic” you do not mean that China is out. You would say, let's look at the research, the topic of the research, the entity that you're dealing with—as Mr. Houlden was saying—and look at the level of risk and use that. Is that the kind of approach you're talking about, rather than just putting all the countries into different boxes from the start?

[Cherie Wong]

Yes, in a way, but I think that even if we're collaborating with a U.S. entity that has known human rights violations, our reaction should be the same as we how would react to collaborating with a Chinese entity that has human rights violations in its record. That's what I mean by country-agnostic. We should be looking at the conduct of the activities that are being taken by the entity we're collaborating with or potentially collaborating with.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Is that conduct always known beforehand? If this is a new agency or a new researcher, how do we assess that?

[Cherie Wong]

Another issue is that a lot of these malicious actors will mask their affiliations. They will purposely hide that they're affiliated with a state entity or military entity, so it requires a bit of research and work. I think this is what Professor Fung was saying, that university research offices could take on a part of that responsibility and vet which entities are at risk.

However, ultimately, nothing would beat a federal guideline on who these entities are that have state and military affiliations, and they would provide that information to state and military entities for their use.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Professor Fung, you talked about some of the lures that these entities were using to try to entrap people, and a lot of that involved large amounts of money, or certainly more money. Would you say that that's part of the solution? I can't imagine it's the whole solution, but is part of the solution for Canadian researchers to be better funded and for Canadian students to be better funded so that the lures that are dangled in front of them aren't quite so attractive?

[Benjamin Fung]

Yes, definitely. One way to tackle this is to increase the research funding so that Canadian students, local students have more opportunities to do active research in Canada.

Another way to tackle the problem is to inform the professors—basically, raise the awareness of the engineering and science professors. I see that Public Safety has safeguarded science programs. It's trying to raise awareness at universities. One of the meetings I attended when they came to McGill had an excellent presentation, but I saw that the attendees were not really from engineering and science. One way to tackle the problem is, I would say, to educate the professors, raise awareness and let them know the potential risk. That's very important.

Another level is at the research office. We need to train the research officers to identify what the potential foreign interference entities are. Sometimes this may require additional information from the government agencies.