PM Mark Carney's Trade Fixation Wisdom

"[China's theft of western intellectual property amounts to a] lost generation of prosperity [for Canada]."

"Not to overhype it, but there is the reality that all of your data -- what you say, where you go, with whom you are, who you associate with, everything to do around your car -- will be acquired by China."

"It is not a question for me, it is a reality."

"You need to have more than your eyes wide open; you need to also make sure that you're protecting your wallet in your back pocket."

"The amount ... of intellectual property that has been taken away from the West, from Great Britain, from Canada, the United States is essentially a lost generation of prosperity. It's not the amount of job losses in our society now, but also in the future."

"Any new information innovation technology that comes into China is looked at through the prism of 'Can we industrialize it to make to create jobs and opportunities', but also, is there a way to weaponize it to essentially give new capabilities to the People's Liberation Army." 

Former head, Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) David Vigneault 

Chinese-made Geely E5 SUV electric vehicle at the International Paris Motor Show on Oct. 12, 2026. Photo by Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images

 

Canada's Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney found it politically expedient to appeal to China for trade deals in an attempt to offset some of the trade damage imposed on Canada though U.S. President Donald Trump's imposition of crushing tariffs on an entire range of critical Canadian goods and services. The Free Trade agreement that Mr. Trump had signed in his previous administration extolling it as a 'good deal' for the U.S. has been eviscerated by that same Mr. Trump who claims his intention of forcing bankruptcy on Canada to make it into a 51st U.S. state.

 

The brilliant Mark Carney made a deal with the devil to save Canadian GDP from the ravages of a formerly friendly neighbour, driving the country toward a different kind of colonization, this time by a colossus of consumer-goods-production like none other, working zealously to bring the entire world into a state of dependence on Chinese-produced manufacturing and advanced technologies garnered by the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing's cyber-tentacles and student and foreign worker infiltration abroad skilled at espionage and lifting industrial/scientific and government intellectual properties.

 

Entry by Chinese-manufactured electric vehicles into Canada will set loose another enterprise-acquisitive facet of Beijing's -- the focus on private individual data put to whatever use in assessing social systems, customs, proclivities, current events and any kind of minutiae that might conceivably be of any use in understanding, manipulating, coercing, convincing, or leading foreign populations in a direction useful to the CCP as it goes about routinely and covertly offering its services to all that fail to suspect their enterprising purpose.

 

Mr. Vigneault's focus is the entry of Chinese-made electric vehicles and the software it is loaded with, including the capability to transmit back to Chinese investigators all manner of data which in aggregate might prove to be useful to the intelligence agencies and the military with which they are integrated for future use in some unknown but possibly malign purpose. Among the Five Eyes intelligence chiefs concern is being expressed about those electric vehicles made in China. But former CSIS chief Vigneault's is the first to voice his expert misgivings from a Canadian perspective plainly and publicly.

 

Mark Carney's interest in arranging potential joint-venture Chinese EV manufacturing to Canada to replace U.S. automakers leaving under pressure from the U.S. president is not viewed with favour by Mr.Vigneault from his intelligence perspective. It is, in fact, a careless, dangerous folly. Yet in  his zeal to increase trade with China, preparing to lower tariff levels, some 50,000 Chinese EVs are set to enter Canada on an annual basis. "To make Canada a leader in electric vehicle manufacturing, we're working to attract significant new joint-venture Chinese investments", Mr. Carney stated in unheeding triumph.

 

In its wholesale acquisitive greed, Beijing has passed a law that all Chinese companies and individuals whether in China itself or based and living abroad have a lawful obligation to work on China's behalf to aid and assist its operatives in espionage operations and in acquiring by stealth and any means conceivable, the intellectual property of governments, industries, research facilities, viral-medical laboratoties and academic institutions that might further Chinese enterprise. Such furtive stealth has exacted its toll in Canada in the past, where industrial secrets of successful corporations in Chinese hands have undercut and ruined all future prospects for the original corporation forced out of business through Chinese uncompetitive strategies.

 

In his address last week in London, speaking to the BBC, Mr. Vigneault added his concerns over the pathological rise of antisemitism globally, mentioning in particular that anti-Jewish, anti-Israel terrorists radicalized by ignorance in Canada are threatening the Canadian Jewish community. What he either diplomatically or through political awareness failed to make note of in his comments was that Canada's careless immigration process, refugee intake, and acceptance of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa have imported their venomous brand of traditional Jew-hate as baggage with which they have been able to turn a flicker of antisemitism into a raging-blazing-hot furnace. 

Pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrators are seperated by police in Montreal, on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026. (Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press)

"With Israel, you can absolutely disagree with policies. Unfortunately, I've seen some of the more extreme groups recuperate some of the legitimate angst against those policies and turn that into antisemitism."

I've seen that in terrorist attacks in my country, in Canada, where people who honestly have no idea what they're talking about, but the radicalization online essentially brings them ... to become anti-Semite."

Former CSIS head, David Vigneault