Chinese electric vehicles still pose a national security threat despite Canada lifting its tariff blockade, security experts warn, adding that nothing has modified for the reason that previous federal government voiced concerns nearly two years ago.
Yet those experts also warn that the cybersecurity and privacy threats extend beyond Chinese-made vehicles to any automobile connected to the web, which requires a strong response from Ottawa.
The brand new trade deal signed by Prime Minister Mark Carney and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Jan. 16 allows for as much as 49,000 Chinese EVs to enter Canada at a significantly reduced tariff rate of 6.1 per cent in exchange for China lifting tariffs on Canadian agricultural goods.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has blasted the deal, warning not only in regards to the impact on the province’s auto sector but additionally the cybersecurity concerns around Chinese EVs, which he has called “spy vehicles.”
“If you get in your cellphone, it’s the Chinese — and I’m not making these things up — they’re going to be listening to your telephone conversation,” he told delegates on the Rural Ontario Municipal Association conference in Toronto last week.
Experts say the potential for Chinese governments or businesses to make use of internet-connected vehicles to pay attention to drivers’ phone calls or record their movements stays a really real threat, particularly to the Chinese diaspora in Canada.
There are also broader cybersecurity concerns, said Neil Bisson, director of the Global Intelligence Knowledge Network and a retired intelligence officer with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
“It just allows one other portal into our infrastructure, each communication-wise and energy-wise, because we’ll be plugging these vehicles into our own electric infrastructure,” he said in an interview.
“The opportunities to potentially do cyberattacks, to shut down critical infrastructure, it’s all there.”
Carney has said the EV take care of China, which incorporates a provision that half of those imported vehicles must cost lower than $35,000 by 2030, will ensure electric vehicles are cheaper for Canadians.
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“I feel trade has essentially trumped national security,” Bisson said, particularly with Carney’s efforts to diversify Canada’s economy away from the U.S.
“The unlucky thing is that with the choice to do that, we’re isolating ourselves from a few of our Five Eye partners, including the USA, who’ve also said that Chinese-manufactured electric vehicles pose a threat to national security.”
In June 2024, when Ottawa was weighing whether to match U.S. tariffs on Chinese EVs to stop those cheaper models from flooding the North American market, then-deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland made clear the concerns were not only economic.
“We’re also taking a look at the national security aspect of this: the safety aspect, including cybersecurity, in relation to Chinese exports of high technology items like EVs,” Freeland said.
Not long after those comments, Canada ultimately followed through by slapping 100 per cent tariffs on all electric vehicles made in China.
In September of that very same yr, Freeland said Ottawa was “absolutely” considering following the USA’ lead in banning Chinese auto software from all vehicles sold in Canada, though that ban has not yet materialized.
On the time of Freeland’s comments, David Shipley, the CEO of Recent Brunswick-based cybersecurity firm Beauceron Security, called those EVs “rolling spy vans” due to technology they contain, including microphones and cameras.
That assessment hasn’t modified 18 months later, he told Global News in a brand new interview.
“The priority about China is that China is motivated to do that,” he said, “and so they have the aptitude and so they have legal infrastructure and requirements for his or her firms to co-operate with them” under Chinese national security laws.
Those self same authorities are behind the spying and national security concerns surrounding TikTok, prompting efforts within the U.S. to attempt to alternatively ban the favored video-sharing app or divest its American business component from Chinese owner ByteDance.
Yet Shipley said there’s a bigger problem facing Canada: that any equivalent EV or other internet-connected vehicle — no matter where it’s manufactured — has the identical vulnerabilities, which Chinese state-sponsored cyber actors may also exploit.
“In the event that they wish to spy on a connected automobile, they’re not only going to spy in their very own cars — they’re going to spy on every internet-connected automobile because they’re smart enough, they’ll figure it out, and so they absolutely can do it,” he said.
“So it’s myopic to focus solely on Chinese-manufactured vehicles because the problems we’re talking about cross brands. I’m as uncomfortable with the aptitude for Tesla to listen in to me as I’m for Beijing.”
In 2021, China banned Tesla vehicles from parking or driving near certain government and military compounds over the identical spying concerns leveraged against Chinese-made EVs.
Shipley added that he’s raised these concerns and the necessity for regulation to guard Canadian drivers’ data privacy with senior federal government officials, but those warnings haven’t been met with motion.
“The response from our leadership has been to concentrate on all the opposite crises of the day,” he said.
“That is certainly one of those things where Canadian public policy fails at essentially the most. It’s the low-probability, high-impact event. We’re really good at coping with frequent low-impact events, but we’re terrible at considering through the implications of this.”
In an interview with the Toronto Star this week, Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree said the federal government doesn’t share Ford’s concerns about Chinese EVs spying on Canadians.
“I’ll let the premier of Ontario offer his perspective, but from a Canadian safety and security, public safety perspective, we don’t have concerns,” he said.
“Any vehicles that are available may have to abide by Canadian standards.”
Anandasangaree’s office didn’t reply to Global News’ questions on those comments, including how the federal government reached that conclusion or otherwise shifted its position from Freeland’s 2024 remarks.
Shipley said he has proposed a consumer bill of rights for each vehicle connected 24-7 to the web, which would come with requiring manufacturers to issue security updates when flaws are present in software and to have mandatory testing for brand new and emerging cyber threats.
Drivers also needs to have the ability to disconnect their vehicles from the web within the event of a security breach and still have the ability to drive like normal, he added.
“There was a hack I watched in Las Vegas where someone found out learn how to hack a automobile dealer network after which trace individual vehicles, have the ability to seek out their location and more,” he said. “And that creates every kind of privacy, but additionally safety, risks for people like victims of intimate partner violence. These are clear.
“We’ve known for 10 years that you would remotely, over the web, take control of certain vehicles and potentially cause life-threatening situations. And we’ve done nothing.”
With files from Global News’ Sophall Duch and Touria Izri