This decision, long awaited, had been postponed by the Canadian government due to diplomatic tensions between Ottawa and Beijing following the 2018 arrest of Huawei financial director, Meng Wanzhou.
Le Monde with AFP
Canada will exclude the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from the deployment of its 5G network in Canada, the government of Justin Trudeau announced Thursday, May 19. This long -awaited decision, had been postponed by the Canadian government due to diplomatic tensions between Ottawa and Beijing, following the 2018 arrest of Huawei financial director, Meng Wanzhou.
The country joins the other members of the “Five-Eyes” intelligence alliance (five eyes), the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, which had already decided in Disapanese of the Chinese group.
“Suppliers who have already installed these equipment will be forced to stop using and withdrawing them,” said the Minister of Canadian Industry, François-Philippe Champagne.
For many years, the American government has worked a lot with its allies, including Canada, to prevent Huawai from integrating 5G networks in these countries. Washington would fear that Pekin will use the telecommunications company to do cyberspionage. The Pentagon had even been particularly offensive by announcing that the sharing of information that the “Five-Eyes” alliance allows should be reconsidered if the allies were equipped with Huawei for their 5G network. Only Canada had not yet ruled.
show between Ottawa and Beijing
In question, the already strong tensions that shook its relations with China since the arrest in Vancouver at the end of 2018 of Meng Wanzhou, daughter of the founder of Huawei, targeted by an American mandate. Washington accused the Asian giant’s financial director of having violated her embargo against Iran by lying to HSBC bank on the relationship between Huawei and Sky Com, a subsidiary that sold telecommunications equipment in Tehran, since at least 2016.
The American justice also accused him of having, via two subsidiaries, stolen from the industrial secrets of the American telecoms group T-Mobile. Ottawa had therefore found itself in the middle of the technological and geostrategic war that the United States and China declared themselves, with heavy consequences both diplomatic and economic.
The leader had been released on September 25, 2021, after justice had abandoned her prosecution. Since Relations never seem to have warmed between Canada and China.