Contracts to foreign companies | Ottawa is slow to implement security checks

(Ottawa) A year before a telecommunications contract for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) was awarded to a China-linked company, former public safety minister Bill Blair argued in a letter to his colleagues in the opposition that the federal government should be extra vigilant in awarding contracts to companies owned by foreign states.

“There is a risk that foreign actors posing a threat will try to exploit the tenders to their advantage,” he wrote to elected officials in a letter dated December 18, 2020, that The Press obtained under the Access to Information Act.

“State-owned companies can use their vast financial resources to their advantage, allowing them to bid at lower cost to Canadian companies and thus insert themselves into our infrastructure and services to undermine our security,” he added. .

Someone may not have had the memo, because less than a year later, Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) rejected the bid of the Quebec firm Comprod in favor of that of Sinclair Technologies, a company established in Canada, but which is linked to Beijing.

The gap between the bids was less than $60,000, according to information from Radio-Canada, which last December reported the existence of the $550,000 contract to provide the RCMP with equipment to secure its terrestrial radio communications. .

The value of the contract, which was awarded in October 2021 following a PSPC verification process, may seem marginal since year after year, the federal government awards $22 billion in contracts for goods and service every year.

“It is certain that we cannot assess the risk to national security of each of the calls for tenders. But I dare to believe that the radio equipment that we buy for the police forces should be at the top of the list,” says Stephanie Carvin, assistant professor of international affairs at Carleton University.

The case of Sinclair Technologies testifies, according to this specialist in national security issues, “to a problem on a larger scale” and should prompt the federal government to opt for a more rigorous and “flexible” “risk management strategy”, in in addition to collaborating more with its partners in the Five Eyes group (Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States).

A “silo” approach to change

In this case, the Government of Canada could have turned to the United States, where Hytera Communications had been blacklisted. The Chinese company, owned about 10% by Beijing through an investment fund, has controlled Sinclair Technologies since 2017.

A parliamentary committee is currently studying the contract, which has been suspended.

In 2020, another committee reviewed a security equipment contract awarded to another Chinese company, Nuctech.

In a report titled Ensuring a strong security framework for federal procurementit recommended, among other things, that Ottawa ensure “the conduct of a rigorous risk assessment at the start of any procurement process by reinforcing the checklist of security requirements”.

MP Pierre Paul-Hus, who was a member of this committee, believes that we must put an end to the “silo” way of operating in terms of procurement if we want to prevent malicious companies or state actors from slip through the cracks.

“What we saw in the case of Nuctech is that if no one in the department raises a flag, PSPC proceeds with the purchase. This is what happened in 2020 and this is what just happened again. There is still no cohesion and that has to change, ”insists the elected Conservative.

No security breaches, says Ottawa

In committee on Monday, RCMP Deputy Commissioner of Specialized Policing Services Bryan Larkin reported that unlike the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, federal policing does not have an inventory of businesses with activities or connections. questionable.

Bill Blair’s successor at the Department of Public Safety, Marco Mendicino, told the same committee table that he had no reason to believe that national security could have been compromised by the awarding of the contract to Sinclair Technologies. .

Federal police argued the same.

The Trudeau government nevertheless acknowledged that the contract should never have been initialed.

“Our independent public service should never have signed this contract. […] We expect national security issues to be at the heart of all the decisions we make,” Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said last December.

With William Leclerc, The Press