Canada should immediately end all government-funded research collaborations with China in a host of sensitive technology areas, a parliamentary committee has recommended in a new report. The ban is needed, the panel said, to counter the Chinese government’s “increasingly assertive” efforts to build up its military and scientific might, sometimes through espionage.
“While international collaboration to advance scientific knowledge for the benefit of humanity is important, it does not supersede the need for the government to protect the national security of Canada,” states the report, which the Special Committee on the Canada-People’s Republic of China Relationship presented to Parliament on 4 November.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has until early March 2025 to respond to the recommendation, which would significantly expand existing Canadian restrictions on research collaborations with China. It’s not clear how many researchers would be affected if the government adopted the expanded controls, but Canadian collaborations with Chinese institutions are not uncommon.
The report was prompted by a high-profile incident at Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory (NML), which has top biosafety level facilities to handle the most dangerous viruses. In 2019 two Chinese Canadian researchers were escorted out of the laboratory and eventually fired over security breaches, which government officials said included improperly sending viral samples to colleagues at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China and failing to disclose professional relationships with Chinese researchers and institutions.
The controversy was one factor that kick-started a renewed focus on foreign interference in Canadian research, and in January the government released new rules on foreign collaborations. The Policy on Sensitive Technology Research and Affiliations of Concern forbids researchers with government funding from collaborating with people affiliated with a list of about 100 entities, mostly based in China, in 11 fields of research, including artificial intelligence (AI), aerospace, quantum science, and biotechnology. (The United States has a mosaic of laws and regulations that also limit or bar federally funded researchers working in a number of fields deemed sensitive from collaborating with researchers in China, Iran, and a handful of other nations.)
Many of the new report’s 12 recommendations focus on tightening security at NML and across government. But the report also recommends expanding the existing policy by barring researchers working on sensitive technologies from working with all individuals and entities in China. It would also ban any kind of work with WIV, which some observers claim helped spark the COVID-19 pandemic, and prohibit researchers in Canada from participating in China’s Thousand Talents funding program for overseas scientists.
“The attitude and behavior of China in recent years has made them much less an entity that you could look at for a partnership or collaboration for mutual benefit,” says Ken Hardie, a Liberal member of parliament and chair of the committee.
Some academics who study national security have been sounding that warning for years. Christian Leuprecht, a professor at the Royal Military College and senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a think tank, testified to the committee that “the infiltration and cooptation of Canadian research by Chinese defense, intelligence, national security, and dual-use technology entities is deep and vast.”
The committee’s recommendations are particularly interesting, Leuprecht says, because they run counter to the government’s current policy of restricting collaboration only with specific people or entities, an approach he says is inadequate. “The only way to mitigate risk is across the entire field,” he says. There are some areas where the risk is low or easy to reduce, he notes, including climate change research, but others where that is not feasible, “such as all research related to computing, AI, or electric vehicles.”
Leuprecht is skeptical, however, that the current government will be willing to adopt a broader, field-based approach, because it could put at risk the potentially lucrative economic returns of working with China. “This government will always put economic ties above security,” he says.
Hardie says he has “no doubt” the government will take the recommendations seriously. And he acknowledges that broadening the rules could create problems for scientists who frequently work with colleagues in China. “Our challenge,” he says, “is to ensure that collaboration in science does take place, but with trusted partners. There shouldn’t be a chill on trusted partners.”
The government is reviewing the report and will provide a response “in due course,” says a spokesperson for Canada’s Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. And a spokesperson for the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development says the government’s policy is not intended to target specific countries, but rather any entity that could pose a threat. It also seeks to protect individual scientists, both Canadian and foreign, from discrimination, harassment, and coercion. “We must always remember to differentiate between the actions of the foreign governments with which we have differences and the peoples and businesses of those countries.”
