Canada’s three major national research agencies will no longer fund proposals from scientists doing “sensitive research” that involves foreign collaborators deemed to pose a security risk to the country.
Although the new policy, announced on 14 February, doesn’t mention China, it parallels actions taken in recent years by the United States, Australia, and other countries to prevent their research investments from benefiting China’s ruling party or military.
Proponents of the expanded reviews say the new policy simply reflects the need for the government to be more careful in choosing those collaborations. “The intent is to make research as open as possible and as secure as necessary,” says Chad Gaffield, head of U15, an organization representing the 15 largest Canadian research universities that has been working with government officials since 2018 on how to improve research security.
Özsu is familiar with four of those rejected proposals. They would have supported work on cloud computing, software engineering, and data managment done at a center he runs that is jointly funded by Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications giant. Each proposal earned high marks from NSERC’s scientific reviewers, Özsu says, but was rejected for unspecified security reasons.
Even so, the new policy explicitly bans funding for any collaboration in a “sensitive research area” with someone “connected to military, national defense, or state security entities” seen as a threat to Canada. That broad scope could lead to regulatory overreach, worries Shawn Barber, a former Canadian diplomat who managed economic security for Public Safety Canada, one of the agencies that rolled out the new policy along with the ministries for health and for innovation, science, and industry.
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