A “benefactor” member of the Canada-China Business Council, Huawei has cultivated the habit of filling senior corporate positions with veteran insiders from both the Liberal and Conservatives parties. The company has lately taken on the Canadian wing of the public-relations giant Hill+Knowlton Strategies to sell itself as a trustworthy corporate citizen. It also brought in Daniel Moulton and Chad Rogers, Ontario Liberal and Conservative party insiders, respectively, who registered earlier this year to lobby for Huawei. Morgan Elliott, a senior official from the Liberal governments of Jean Chretien and Paul Martin, is now Huawei’s vice-president for government affairs. Alykhan Velshi, formerly a senior aide to Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, was hired on as vice-president of corporate affairs. Other Huawei recruits include former journalist and Martin-Chretien era speechwriter Scott Feschuk, and Martin’s former director of communications, Scott Reid.
It’s gotten so that Ottawa can’t bring itself to admit that Huawei should not be permitted to bid in Canada’s 2020 5G spectrum auction, even though everybody knows Huawei is a threat to Canada’s national security. Three former Canadian intelligence chiefs have said so, publicly. Six U.S. intelligence agencies have said so. Among Canada’s Five Eyes security and intelligence partners, the U.S. and Australia have said so, New Zealand has shut the 5G door on Huawei, and while British Telecom has frozen Huawei out the United Kingdom has yet to formally bar Huawei from its 5G system. But Taiwan has shut Huawei out, and so has Japan, and so has Poland. Even Vietnam won’t allow Huawei in.
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