François-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s minister of
innovation, science and industry, said on Thursday that the country intended
“to prohibit the inclusion of Huawei and ZTE’s products and services in
Canada’s telecommunications system”.
“Providers who already have this equipment installed will be
required to cease its use and remove it,” he said. The federal government will
not compensate companies for the removal of Huawei and ZTE gear, he added.
Equipment used for 4G networks will also need to be removed.
The US and many of its allies have expressed strong concern
in recent years about Huawei’s global expansion amid worries that the company
has ties to China’s military and facilitates Beijing’s cyber espionage around
the world.
“We’ve been expecting this for three years,” Alykhan Velshi,
Huawei’s vice-president of corporate affairs for the Americas, told CBC,
Canada’s public broadcaster, in an interview.
“We’re disappointed by the outcome, but what the government
announced is the intent to introduce legislation, but right now there is no
prohibition on the book for selling Huawei equipment.”
Velshi said the federal government has not told Huawei what
national security threat the company’s equipment posed to Canada.
“It’s for the government to provide evidence that Huawei is
a national security threat as they claim. They have not done so.”
The Chinese Embassy in Canada slammed the decision as
politically motivated and said Beijing would take “all necessary measures” to
protect its companies.
The embassy also said that Huawei and ZTE have strong cyber
security records and Ottawa’s decision not only harmed Chinese interests but
violated the principles of free trade and market economies.
The US had long urged Canada to join the other members of
the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network — which includes the UK, Australia
and New Zealand — to ban Huawei from their domestic telecom networks. The UK
and Australia have imposed restrictions that prohibit the Chinese company from
operating in their markets.
Huawei’s network equipment is used by a number of large
Canadian telecommunications companies. In December, the Chinese group said
Canadian telecoms had spent more than C$700mn (US$546mn) on its technology.
The Trump administration took several actions to ban Huawei
from participating in 5G networks in the US as part of an effort to hobble the
Shenzhen-based company.
It also put the group on a commerce department blacklist,
known as the “entity list”, which prohibited US companies from supplying
technology to Huawei, and imposed additional restrictions that required any
business seeing to supply Huawei with products containing US technology to
apply for an export control licence.
The ban on Huawei comes eight months after Ottawa allowed
Meng Wanzhou, the company’s chief financial officer and daughter of the founder
Ren Zhengfei, to return to China following three years of detention in
Vancouver. Meng had been detained on criminal fraud charges and was being held
pending a Canadian court ruling on whether she could be extradited to the US.
She was released after reaching a deal with US prosecutors.
Hours after Meng’s release, prime minister Justin Trudeau
announced that two Canadian citizens who had been detained in China for more
than three years — Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, known as the “two
Michaels” — had been released.
Some experts speculated Canada had previously been reluctant
to ban Huawei despite the US pressure because it wanted to make sure that it
could secure the release of the two men.
Days after the release of Meng and the “two Michaels”,
Trudeau said a decision on whether to ban 5G equipment made by Huawei was weeks
away. But months passed before the announcement on Thursday.
“We took the time needed to do that review, consult with
allies,” Champagne said. “When you deal with national security, you have to
take the time to do things properly.”
The pressure on Huawei has grown in recent years as the US
cracks down on Chinese companies that it believes are enabling Beijing’s
espionage or undertaking activities that could threaten US national security.
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