Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the committee for the opportunity to speak about issues of scientific collaboration with China.
I was fortunate to work in government for 37 years, primarily in science and technology policies, programs and funding, but my master's is focused on China. I speak some Mandarin and over the years I was often the official who engaged with China on R and D collaborations, including seven years on the Canada-China joint committee on S and T. In addition, for five years, I was the ADM responsible for the energy labs at NRCan, and for four years I was the executive vice-president of NSERC, so I can address both government and university R and D with China.
For more than 10 years since my retirement, I've been writing about China's innovation system. When I began seeing issues of concern about nine years ago, I started giving briefings to my former colleagues in government to raise their awareness of the risks.
My prime concern has been China's policy for the integration of military and civilian technology development. It became a top priority of the Chinese government starting in 2014, and Xi himself chairs the national commission for military-civilian development. The risk for Canada is that our university scientists could be partnering with civilian scientists or engineers at any university in China and not be aware that their research is going out the back door to the PLA. As I've said many times, the PLA are not our friends.
I'm pleased to see that the committee recognizes this issue by highlighting five specific fields of research, which are all priorities for the PLA, and also by stipulating that there are other fields that are potentially problematic. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, or ASPI, has developed a list of these, and I would add to it space science, polar research and genomics. Canada should not be partnering with China in any of these.
The second issue is the direct presence of Chinese military scientists and engineers in our universities and partnerships. ISED has been working on guidance since their February 14 announcement. ASPI has compiled a Chinese defence universities tracker of military universities and labs. That list should be given to all Canadian university and government labs, advising them not to partner with people from any of those institutions, with due diligence applied for others, too, as Chinese scientists have sometimes listed a different institution to obscure where they are really from. The provinces need to be part of this process.
A third issue is Canadian researchers partnering with Chinese military and surveillance technology companies like SenseTime, Tencent, Alibaba, iFlytek and Huawei, which work with the military and which also design and sell equipment to repress the Uyghurs and others. They should be added to the list I mentioned. We know how MPs feel about the Uyghur genocide. Canadian researchers should share those concerns.
That brings me to the issue of academic freedom. I completely get that researchers want to be able to partner with whomever they want. I would just remind them of the ethical lens that they should be applying as a human being with Canadian values. Surely if they had a Uyghur or someone from Taiwan sitting in front of them, they would be ashamed to talk about how they helped with Uyghur repression and with weapons to attack Taiwan, and there is also a reputational risk for their university with such research.
The Government of Canada has realized the gravity of the issues I've raised and has taken numerous steps to address them, including briefings of university administrators and researchers, user-friendly guidelines to protect our research, the national security screening of proposals to the granting councils and the proviso that the government will not fund research with PLA-associated organizations.
The Business Council of Canada's recent recommendations are also important. There is more that can be done, especially to align our approach with our allies in the Five Eyes.
I'll stop there. Thank you.