EDITORIAL: Huawei decision needs to be made
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Before the election started, the Liberal cabinet told Canadians that a decision would be made on whether or not to ban Huawei from its 5G network after the election.
But now we’re a month after the election and we’re hearing the same old refrain about waiting and gathering all of the facts, which sound like delay tactics.
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Two new developments in this saga reveal how the decision can’t be left to drag on for much longer.
The first is a direct warning made by U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security advisor at a security conference in Halifax this past weekend.
“When they get Huawei into Canada … they’re going to know every health record, every banking record, every social media post – they’re going to know everything about every single Canadian,” said Robert O’Brien, according to Canadian Press reports on the conference. “What the Chinese are doing makes Facebook and Google look like child’s play, as far as collecting information on folks.”
O’Brien is far from the first to sound the alarm on the alleged security risks of Huawei – ones that the firm denies – and we doubt he’ll be the last.
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Meanwhile, Huawei’s Canadian office has chosen to commence an aggressive charm offensive to get Canadians on its side.
“Chinese high-tech giant Huawei says it has funnelled $50-million into Canadian university research over the past decades and added nearly $700-million to Canada’s economic output in 2018 alone, figures it is released as it tries to persuade Ottawa no to ban its equipment from next-generation 5G wireless networks in this country,” reports The Globe & Mail.
Maybe they feel they have the wind at their sails at this moment. Or maybe they’re nervous they’re about to lose out.
China’s new ambassador to Canada has also kept up the refrain set by his predecessor that we should approve the tech giant’s participation in our 5G grid.
We’ve got the U.S. pushing us one way and China the other. As we’ve argued in this space before, it would be prudent judgment to ban Huawei. It’s just not worth the risk.
We can’t keep dragging this out to satisfy everyone. It’s time to soon decide and take a stand.
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