Canada will ban Chinese telecommunications giants Huawei and ZTE from rolling out its 5G network in the country after years of dithering, Justin Trudeau’s government announced Thursday.
This long-awaited decision had been postponed by the Canadian government due to diplomatic tensions between Ottawa and Beijing in recent years.
“We are announcing our intention to ban Huawei and ZTE products and services in Canada’s telecommunications systems,” Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said at a press conference.
The example of the allies
“This follows a full review by our security agencies and in consultation with our closest allies,” he added.
The United States has already excluded Huawei from the deployment of 5G technology on its soil, citing risks of espionage or sabotage of Western networks, which the Chinese telecom giant denies. Other Canadian allies have followed suit in the United States, including the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia and Sweden.
Major diplomatic crisis
The diplomatic relationship between Canada and China soured at the end of 2018 with the arrest, in Vancouver, of the financial director of Huawei and daughter of the founder of the Chinese telecom juggernaut.
This marked the start of a major diplomatic crisis between the two countries, with the parallel detention in China of two Canadians.
After nearly three years of proceedings, Meng Wanzhou was finally released at the end of September 2021 and returned to China. And the two Canadians were released in stride.