Canada deal on Chinese EVs shows trade ‘trumped national security’: experts

Chinese electric vehicles still pose a national security threat despite Canada lifting its tariff blockade, security experts warn, adding that nothing has changed since the previous federal government voiced concerns nearly two years ago.

Yet those experts also warn that the cybersecurity and privacy threats extend beyond Chinese-made vehicles to any car connected to the internet, which requires a robust response from Ottawa.

The new trade deal signed by Prime Minister Mark Carney and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Jan. 16 allows for up to 49,000 Chinese EVs to enter Canada at a significantly reduced tariff rate of 6.1 per cent in exchange for China lifting tariffs on Canadian agricultural goods.

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Experts say the potential for Chinese governments or businesses to use internet-connected vehicles to listen in on drivers’ phone calls or record their movements remains a very real threat, particularly to the Chinese diaspora in Canada.

There are also broader cybersecurity concerns, said Neil Bisson, director of the Global Intelligence Knowledge Network and a retired intelligence officer with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

“It just allows another portal into our infrastructure, both communication-wise and energy-wise, because we’ll be plugging these vehicles into our own electric infrastructure,” he said in an interview.

“The opportunities to potentially do cyberattacks, to shut down critical infrastructure, it’s all there.”

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In June 2024, when Ottawa was weighing whether to match U.S. tariffs on Chinese EVs to stop those cheaper models from flooding the North American market, then-deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland made clear the concerns were not just economic.

“We’re also looking at the national security aspect of this: the security aspect, including cybersecurity, when it comes to Chinese exports of high technology items like EVs,” Freeland said.

Not long after those comments, Canada ultimately followed through by slapping 100 per cent tariffs on all electric vehicles made in China.

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At the time of Freeland’s comments, David Shipley, the CEO of New Brunswick-based cybersecurity firm Beauceron Security, called those EVs “rolling spy vans” because of the technology they contain, including microphones and cameras.

That assessment hasn’t changed 18 months later, he told Global News in a new interview.

“The concern about China is that China is motivated to do this,” he said, “and they have the capability and they have legal infrastructure and requirements for their companies to co-operate with them” under Chinese national security laws.

Those same authorities are behind the spying and national security concerns surrounding TikTok.

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