That's a very significant risk that needs to be properly assessed and regulated by Transport Canada with the support of the relevant security agencies in Canada.
All electric vehicles and, in fact, all modern cars now have that capacity for gathering information and data. The issue is whether we can assure how that data is handled, where it is held, who is able to access it and how access to it can be used. The same goes for the capacity to potentially remotely control electric vehicles. Let's be realistic. Within a decade, it's likely that many of these vehicles will also be operating autonomously.
There is already evidence that, for example, some vehicles from some manufacturers can be remote-controlled and used in hazardous ways. It's a multivariate threat, potentially. The crux of the matter is whether or not you are able to trust the government that regulates the countries that are providing those vehicles. It is not possible to have that trust with the People's Republic of China's government. If you're going to admit vehicles of that sort into the Canadian economy and let Canadian consumers drive them around, you are going to have to have careful regulation of them. Most likely you're going to have to require that any software they are running is not Chinese software, but rather is software either from trusted domestic Canadian providers or from other trusted providers. There may be technical means of mitigating that. I think that may be what the government has in mind.
I always come back to two questions. Once you factor in the cost of doing that, does it still make economic sense? Do you still have a price advantage? If the whole point is to drive technological development in Canada and provide consumers with lower cost products, if those benefits are offset by the costs of all these security measures, what's the point?