Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addressed the media on Tuesday to says a decision on whether or not Canada will ban Huawei 5G tech will debut in the “coming weeks.”
“We continue to weigh and look at the different options, but we will be no doubt making announcements in the coming weeks,” said Trudeau when asked about the Huawei decision, according to Reuters.
“We have actually seen that many Canadian telecommunications companies, if not all of them, have started to remove Huawei from their networks and are moving forward in ways that doesn’t involve them as a company,” added the Prime Minister.
After Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou was recently freed and returned to China, along with the release of detained Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, the spotlight is back on Canada to decide whether or not it will join its Five Eyes security allies in banning Huawei, which has ties to the Chinese Communist Party. The fear is Huawei 5G hardware could contain backdoors and compromise national security.
A recent report from The Globe and Mail spoke with experts who concluded Canada will likely ban Huawei 5G gear, as pressure is mounting on the government to make a decision after mulling over three years on the matter. Rogers, Telus and Bell are not using any 5G gear from Huawei.
Huawei told the Globe Canada remains an attractive place to invest “because of its skilled and diverse work force and openness to immigration,” despite the country making up about 1 percent of global revenues.
