“… Applications submitted by a university or affiliated research institution to the federal granting councils — the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada — and the Canada Foundation for Innovation that involve research to advance a sensitive technology research area will not be funded if any of the researchers involved in activities supported by the grant are affiliated with, or in receipt of funding or in-kind support, from a university, research institute or laboratory connected to military, national defense, or state-security entities that could pose a risk to Canada’s national security.”
China takes exception to being named a threat
China has had its hand in global research and development efforts funded through public entities, such as universities, for decades. The Canadian media outlet, The Globe & Mail, published a report in January 2023 that contained research from Strider Technologies, detailing a plethora of Canadian universities whose academics published more than 240 joint papers on a variety of topics, many of which would fall into the “sensitive” bailiwick.
The Chinese Embassy in Ottawa, issued a statement on January 16 in which it noted that China is “strongly dissatisfied with and firmly opposes this, and has made serious demarch to Canada.” The statement goes on to highlight how China spends billions of dollars on global research.
It concludes with the admonishment that Canada is engaging in a “small yard with high fences” approach to research, and that China hopes Canada will, “correct its wrong practice, discard the ideological bias and cold war mentality, stop suppressing Chinese academic institutions by abusing tools such as the above-mentioned lists.”
The US National Counterintelligence and Security Center has published a series of awareness materials that highlight the variety of ways in which foreign intelligence and governments target intellectual property and personnel with access to sensitive information.
Limiting its access will limit China’s ability to gain sensitive information
With such materials in hand, it is plain to see that China is correct; its ability to engage in open and unfettered research, harvesting such via their numerous programs, to include the 1,000 Talent Program will be deleteriously affected. Without joint research, China will have a harder time (not impossible, mind you) in engaging, leveraging, harvesting, and exploiting the research from the best and the brightest of the West.
“Nation states, like the People’s Republic of China, are aggressively targeting research universities to leverage their facilities, talent, and know how to enhance their own domestic military and commercial endeavors,” says Greg Levesque, CEO of Strider Technologies. “They exploit the open scientific collaboration process to gain unparalleled access to military and dual-use technology for their own benefit.”
