OTTAWA — The Department of Defense said Thursday it was reviewing several contracts awarded to an Ontario company that has ownership ties with China as part of a broader government review of China-Ottawa’s ties with Sinclair Technologies.

“We are investigating these purchases and the way in which this equipment is being used, together with colleagues from other departments,” Defense Ministry spokesman Daniel Le Bouthillier wrote on Thursday. The government will take all necessary measures to ensure the security of our infrastructures.”

The review came after CBC announced Wednesday that Aurora, Ontario-based Sinclair Technologies had won another contract last year to supply the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) with radio spectrum for a screening system.

Sinclair’s parent company, Norsat International, has been owned by Chinese telecom company Hytera since 2017. The Chinese government owns a 10% stake in Hytera through an investment fund.

Radio-Canada said Thursday that the RCMP has now suspended that contract, citing Office of Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino.

In 2021, the Federal Communications Commission in the United States ruled that Hytera’s technology posed a national security risk. This technology has since been banned in the United States for reasons of public safety, government security, and critical infrastructure surveillance.

Last February, Hytera was charged with 21 counts of espionage after US officials claimed the company stole trade secrets from US competitor Motorola Solutions. Hytera denied the allegations.

Several contracts at Sinclair

The Canadian Department of Defense has awarded Sinclair several contracts over the past decade, including one last year to supply antennas to Canada’s two main naval bases: Halifax and Esquimalt, British Columbia. The other orders were placed prior to Hytera’s acquisition of Norsat in 2017.

Sinclair spokeswoman Martine Cardozo declined to comment Thursday, other than saying Aurora’s business is “a completely independent entity.”

Although the RCMP did not respond to repeated requests for comment, Radio-Canada cited a statement in which federal police expressed their confidence in the security of the system and recalled that all contractors involved must obtain security clearance.

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino told reporters as he left Thursday’s weekly cabinet meeting that the radio equipment was installed by the RCMP, which also monitors and maintains it. “So there are very direct controls on the equipment itself,” he said.

However, Mr Mendicino added that the federal government is reviewing its relationship with Sinclair and the award of the RCMP contract to ensure proper security checks had been carried out.

“There’s no question that there are very valid concerns about how the contract was awarded, which is why we’re looking at it very, very closely,” Mendicino said. Of course, if there were any concerns or deficiencies in this process around the contract, very quick and immediate action would need to be taken to suspend or completely terminate the contract.”

“Why didn’t we ask CST?”

During Thursday afternoon’s Question Time in the House of Commons, Speaker of the Bloc Québécois House of Representatives Alain Therrien asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau how he could explain that his government had been able to “give a Chinese government company ‘access to secret RCMP frequencies'”.

“It is a filtering system that ensures the confidentiality of communications from the Prime Minister and foreign leaders visiting Canada, Mr Therrien argued, and no one has found it necessary to conduct security checks.”

Mr. Trudeau responded that the government’s eyes are “always open when discussing alleged threats from hostile actors,” and he assured his government was “very concerned about the history of these contracts with Sinclair Technologies.”

The Bloc member returned to the charge by reminding the Prime Minister that the federal government already has a Communications Security Facility (CSE) in place. “Just imagine: no one in government has seen fit to seek the expertise of the CST,” said the Laprairie member.

The Prime Minister replied that his government had asked ministers and officials to follow up on the matter.

Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, questioned in a press scramble ahead of the question-and-answer period on Thursday, claimed those contracts “should never have been signed by the civil service, period.”

“What I said in my Indo-Pacific Strategy [il y a dix jours]that we had to make sure we had a national security perspective in everything we do, especially around contracts and procurement.”

To the parliamentary committee

The RCMP’s contract with Sinclair was also discussed at a meeting of the House of Commons’ National Defense Committee, where the Prime Minister’s National Security Advisor, Jody Thomas, appeared to be testifying about security in the Arctic.

“We are looking into what happened to this contract,” assured Ms. Thomas. We create the task for the review that we carry out. I am still collecting information from the relevant ministries.”

China repeatedly came to the table during the parliamentary committee meeting. Thomas said in particular that Beijing’s ambitions in the Arctic are based on its desire to secure shorter sea routes to Europe and to exploit the region’s vast reserves of natural resources.

“(Chinese authorities) have a voracious appetite for hydrocarbons, rare earth minerals and fish,” she explained. They see (the Arctic) as an essential part of their sustainability as a nation. We must therefore ensure that the rich resources of the Canadian Arctic are protected.”