Canada will stop funding projects connected to foreign military, including those with affiliations to China

Per Bloomberg

Canada has decided to make a firm decision about funding projects that have affiliations with a foreign military. The government gave a decision regarding how it is making these decisions to protect itself.

“This new action is one of many significant steps the government of Canada is taking to protect our country, our institutions and our intellectual property,”

The government's decision to cut funding is directed toward projects affiliated with universities, institutes, or labs that have specific connections to these three things.

  • Foreign military
  • National defense
  • State security entities

The announcement was given by Innovation Minister François-Phillipe Champagne, per The Global Mail. It included filtering through funding requests from Canadian universities, especially those sharing sensitive research with China and "other hostile states."

Mr. Champagne: “Grant applications that involve conducting research in a sensitive research area will not be funded if any of the researchers working on the project are affiliated with a university, research institute or laboratory connected to military, national defence or state security entities of foreign state actors...”

Former NSERC executive vice-president Margaret McCuaig-Johnston and now the University of Ottowa senior fellow, shared that there were around 65 universities and teaching institutions for the Chinese military.

So far, 50 universities in Canada have had extensive research collaborations with the Chinese military ever since 2005. Mr. Champagne shared that the government had guidelines regarding research collaboration but said that they weren't upheld.

Mr. Champagne: “The government announced a couple of years ago, guidelines that were supposed to prevent research collaboration in sensitive areas with Beijing. Clearly those guidelines didn’t work,”

Recently, Canada decided to ban foreigners from purchasing residential property starting Jan 1, 2023, for two years. There were only some exemptions, including non-Canadians that married a Canadian citizen, permanent resident, or person registered under the Indian Act or refugees.

Canada has also shot down an unidentified flying object over its territory. This happened a day after the US military took down a "high altitude airborne object" off northern Alaska.

See flow at unusualwhales.com/flow.

Other News:

Resources:

Bloomberg

The Global Mail