VANCOUVER – Cybersecurity experts are warning Canada not to work with Huawei in light of new Australian report that claims the Chinese telecom firm hacked a foreign network and shared the information with Beijing.
A Toronto Star report quotes Christopher Parsons, a cybersecurity expert with Citizen Lab in the Munk School at the University of Toronto, as saying that Canada should heed the concerns expressed by allied countries like the U.S. and Australia about the company being a high-risk security threat.
“Taking their counsel very seriously is an appropriate decision,” said Parsons, in the report.
Noting that Huawei is able to produce equipment at a cheaper cost than competitors, there’s a suspicion on the part of intelligence agencies that the company can undercut competitors because their product is subsidized by the Chinese state, added Charles Burton, a political scientist at the University of Ottawa.
“The subsidies to Huawei are in fact paid back by Huawei providing an all-of-government approach to the installation of this equipment, where it will allow the state to gather extensive amounts of data, which they can gain information that is of use to China’s modernization and military purposes”, he said in the report.
Huawei has extensive partnerships with Canadian institutions to develop 5G infrastructure, plus has teamed up with Telus on early field tests with 5G technology.
