Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree says Ottawa will take steps to ensure vehicles imported from China won’t be able to can’t transmit information back home.-/AFP/Getty Images
The federal government will take steps to ensure that imported Chinese electrical vehicles cannot be used to spy on Canadians, a parliamentary committee heard Thursday.
Testifying before the procedures and House affairs committee, Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree said Ottawa will put safeguards in place to make sure that Chinese EVs do not have “the capability to transmit information” back home.
He was responding to questions from Bloc Québécois MP Christine Normandin, who raised concerns that Chinese EVs could become “little spies on the road that could record our calls and take pictures of where we are going.”
During last month’s official mission to Beijing, Prime Minister Mark Carney signed an initial trade agreement that slashed tariffs on electric vehicles in exchange for Beijing lowering tariffs on Canadian canola and other products.
The Prime Minister agreed to allow up to 49,000 Chinese EVs into the country under the most-favoured-nation tariff rate of 6.1 per cent. Under the agreement, the import limit will increase to 70,000 EVs by 2031.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who criticized the deal, has warned that China would use the vehicles to spy on Canadians. He noted that Ottawa and other allies banned Huawei in 2022 from domestic telecom networks out of concerns that the equipment could have hidden doors to spy.
“All vehicles coming into Canada will have safeguards in place where our information will be protected,” Mr. Anandasangaree assured MPs who are studying foreign interference. “That is very much in line with our national-security priorities.”
But the minister declined to be drawn into any criticism of China.
The new détente with Beijing is Mr. Carney’s response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war against Canada and other allies. Mr. Carney is seeking to diversify trade away from the U.S. with countries such as China and India.
Conservative MP Michael Cooper pressed the minister to explain why Mr. Carney would agree to law-enforcement co-operation with China, given that it’s a police state and has bullied and intimidated the Chinese diaspora in this country.
“It is a regime that has surveilled and harassed and intimidated members of these communities and in doing so it has shown no respect for Canada’s sovereignty,” he said. “How could the Prime Minister possibly have thought it was in Canada’s interest to strike a deal to pursue co-operation with the Beijing dictatorship on matters of law enforcement?”
“I am not here as a foreign-policy expert,” Mr. Anandasangaree said. He went on to say that the point of the law-enforcement co-operation with China is to curtain illegal imports of fentanyl.
The minister did not respond to questions on whether he thought China was the largest national-security threat to Canada.
However, Dan Rogers, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, did not duck the question. He told MPs that China, India and Russia are the main actors in pursuing foreign interference in Canada.
Mr. Anandasangaree also declined to explain why two Liberal MPs were recalled from a parliamentary-delegation trip to Taiwan during Mr. Carney’s visit to China in January.
Liberals Helena Jaczek and Marie-France Lalonde were part of a group of MPs, including three Conservatives, who accepted a six-day trip sponsored by Taiwan, the self-governed island that Beijing says belongs to China.
At the time, the two MPs said they cut the trip short after talking to Canadian government officials and to “avoid confusion with Canada’s foreign policy, given the overlap with the Prime Minister’s engagement in Beijing.”
Asked by Conservative MP Blaine Calkins why the MPs were recalled, Mr. Anandasangaree said the question was “outside the scope of his mandate.” He added it is “up to each individual MP to decide how long they are on a mission.”
Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong has accused the government of bowing to authoritarianism by recalling the MPs.