Higher Education Minister Pascale Déry wants universities to ban Huawei, but two of them refuse to close the door to a possible partnership with the Chinese telecommunications giant.
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In an interview with our Bureau of Inquiry, Minister Déry said she took the issue of espionage in universities “very seriously” and expected that the academic community would no longer work with Huawei.
“With everything that has been said in recent months, yes, the universities must end these agreements. […] The universities are in the process, one by one, of breaking their agreements and not just in Quebec, outside too,” she said.
As we have written in our pages over the past few weeks, six of the 18 Quebec universities have ties to Huawei. Some conduct private research with the company or share the intellectual property of discoveries by filing joint patents.
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They keep the door open
Unlike other Quebec universities which have confirmed to us that they have decided to permanently ban Huawei, Université Laval and Polytechnique are not ruling out the possibility of signing other research partnerships with the company suspected of espionage and which has been excluded. last year of the development of the 5G network.
Université Laval had a 10-year private contract with Huawei, as it told our Bureau of Investigation. It was her last, she said. But the door remains open for funded research projects if they are “approved by federal authorities after a comprehensive national security risk assessment.” Four research projects with a budget of more than $10M are underway with Huawei at the university.
Polytechnique is showing even more openness: private research projects will continue to be assessed on a “case by case” basis. “We will not move forward if we are not able to assess the risks satisfactorily,” spokeswoman Annie Touchette said.
The establishment currently has an ongoing confidential research project with Huawei.
Ready to turn the page
The presence of Huawei is increasingly disturbing in universities. Following our reporting, Federal Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry Francois-Philippe Champagne said in April that “reported information […] about our higher education institutions are troubling” and that we had to be “cautious” in international partnerships.
Minister Déry agrees. “Everything that has been published in recent weeks raises concerns. […] We are on the right path. Our research funds no longer finance risky partnerships,” she says.
At the beginning of May, the University of Waterloo, one of the most prestigious in the country, announced that it was ending its partnership with Huawei to “safeguard scientific research”, a decision hailed by Minister Champagne.
In Quebec, universities McGill, Concordia, University of Montreal and the National Institute of Scientific Research, which have received donations or had ongoing research with Huawei, have all confirmed to us that they will no longer carry out partnerships with the Chinese company.