URAP Applauds Suspension of RCMP Contract With Hytera and Urges Further Government Action

December 8, 2022

Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project (URAP) strongly condemned the federal government amidst yesterday’s news that Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) awarded an RCMP communications equipment contract to a Canadian company controlled by Hytera, a Chinese state-sponsored technology company. This afternoon, after immense pressure from Canadian politicians and policymakers, the media, NGOs, and the Canadian public, the RCMP suspended that contract. URAP applauds this decision and urges further action.

The Canadian company, Sinclair Technologies, received a contract worth $549,637 for a radio frequency (RF) filtering system, ironically meant to protect RCMP radio communications from eavesdropping. Its parent company, Norsat International, has been owned by Hytera Communcations since 2017, a company partially owned by the Chinese government that has been indicted in the United States and is currently facing 21 charges in an espionage case, in which it has been accused of obtaining company secrets from Motorola.

The United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) blacklisted Hytera along with several Chinese companies that pose a national security risk in 2021, and banned sales and imports of their equipment.

Since news of the contract became public yesterday, Canadian academics, researchers and politicians have been calling into question Canada’s safety and security as a result of the access granted to Hytera to the RCMP’s sensitive communications data. URAP’s Research Advisor Conor Healy, who serves as director of government research at IPVM, said the risks include eavesdropping, collection of communications data and jamming or shutting down the radio communications system.

Although the RCMP has terminated Sinclair Technologies’ contract today, URAP urges for further action. URAP demands all RCMP and PSPC staff involved in the approval process of this contact be fired immediately, and for the federal government to initiate a parliamentary inquiry into this disturbing scandal. Additionally, the federal government should take all necessary measures to ensure that any infrastructure built by Sinclair Technologies is removed, and our communications systems re-secured.

Furthermore, Canada must take seriously the threat of Hytera and similar Chinese-owned technology companies through increased information-sharing with the United States. Of the companies on FCC’s blacklist, Canada has so far only taken action against one – Huawei – which the federal government banned from Canada’s 5G network this year in no urgent terms, as they continue to enjoy operationality until the end of their yearlong grace period before the ban goes into full effect. This is not enough.

This Hytera scandal should serve as a lesson for the Canadian government, that we have been naïve about the cooperation of Chinese companies with the CCP, and their resulting threat to Canadian national security. If we don’t act swiftly to protect ourselves from such threats in the future, the consequences could be enormous.