Chinese electric vehicles still pose a national security threat despite Canada lifting its tariff blockade, security experts warn, adding that nothing has changed since the previous federal government voiced concerns nearly two years ago.

Yet those experts also warn that the cybersecurity and privacy threats extend beyond Chinese-made vehicles to any car connected to the internet, which requires a robust response from Ottawa.

The new trade deal signed by Prime Minister Mark Carney and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Jan. 16 allows for up to 49,000 Chinese EVs to enter Canada at a significantly reduced tariff rate of 6.1 per cent in exchange for China lifting tariffs on Canadian agricultural goods.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has blasted the deal, warning not only about the impact on the province’s auto sector but also the cybersecurity concerns around Chinese EVs, which he has called “spy vehicles.”

“When you get on your cellphone, it’s the Chinese — and I’m not making this stuff up — they’re going to be listening to your telephone conversation,” he told delegates at the Rural Ontario Municipal Association conference in Toronto last week.

Experts say the potential for Chinese governments or businesses to use internet-connected vehicles to listen in on drivers’ phone calls or record their movements remains a very real threat, particularly to the Chinese diaspora in Canada.

There are also broader cybersecurity concerns, said Neil Bisson, director of the Global Intelligence Knowledge Network and a retired intelligence officer with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

“It just allows another portal into our infrastructure, both communication-wise and energy-wise, because we’ll be plugging these vehicles into our own electric infrastructure,” he said in an interview.

“The opportunities to potentially do cyberattacks, to shut down critical infrastructure, it’s all there.”

Carney has said the EV deal with China, which includes a provision that half of those imported vehicles must cost less than $35,000 by 2030, will ensure electric vehicles are more affordable for Canadians.

“I think trade has essentially trumped national security,” Bisson said, particularly with Carney’s efforts to diversify Canada’s economy away from the U.S.

“The unfortunate thing is that with the decision to do this, we’re isolating ourselves from some of our Five Eye partners, including the United States, who have also said that Chinese-manufactured electric vehicles pose a threat to national security.”

In June 2024, when Ottawa was weighing whether to match U.S. tariffs on Chinese EVs to stop those cheaper models from flooding the North American market, then-deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland made clear the concerns were not just economic.

“We’re also looking at the national security aspect of this: the security aspect, including cybersecurity, when it comes to Chinese exports of high technology items like EVs,” Freeland said.

Not long after those comments, Canada ultimately followed through by slapping 100 per cent tariffs on all electric vehicles made in China.

In September of that same year, Freeland said Ottawa was “absolutely” considering following the United States’ lead in banning Chinese auto software from all vehicles sold in Canada, though that ban has not yet materialized.

At the time of Freeland’s comments, David Shipley, the CEO of New Brunswick-based cybersecurity firm Beauceron Security, called those EVs “rolling spy vans” because of the technology they contain, including microphones and cameras.

That assessment hasn’t changed 18 months later, he told Global News in a new interview.

“The concern about China is that China is motivated to do this,” he said, “and they have the capability and they have legal infrastructure and requirements for their companies to co-operate with them” under Chinese national security laws.

Those same authorities are behind the spying and national security concerns surrounding TikTok, prompting efforts in the U.S. to try to alternatively ban the popular video-sharing app or divest its American business component from Chinese owner ByteDance.

Yet Shipley said there is a larger problem facing Canada: that any equivalent EV or other internet-connected vehicle — regardless of where it’s manufactured — has the same vulnerabilities, which Chinese state-sponsored cyber actors can also exploit.

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“If they want to spy on a connected car, they’re not just going to spy in their own cars — they’re going to spy on every internet-connected car because they’re smart enough, they can figure it out, and they absolutely can do it,” he said.

“So it’s myopic to focus solely on Chinese-manufactured vehicles because the issues we’re talking about cross brands. I’m as uncomfortable with the capability for Tesla to listen in to me as I am for Beijing.”

In 2021, China banned Tesla vehicles from parking or driving near certain government and military compounds over the same spying concerns leveraged against Chinese-made EVs.

Shipley added that he’s raised these concerns and the need for regulation to protect Canadian drivers’ data privacy with senior federal government officials, but those warnings have not been met with action.

“The response from our leadership has been to focus on all the other crises of the day,” he said.

“This is one of those things where Canadian public policy fails at the most. It is the low-probability, high-impact event. We’re really good at dealing with frequent low-impact events, but we’re terrible at thinking through the consequences of this.”

In an interview with the Toronto Star this week, Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree said the federal government doesn’t share Ford’s concerns about Chinese EVs spying on Canadians.

“I will let the premier of Ontario offer his perspective, but from a Canadian safety and security, public safety perspective, we don’t have concerns,” he said.

“Any vehicles that come in will have to abide by Canadian standards.”

Anandasangaree’s office did not respond to Global News’ questions about those comments, including how the government reached that conclusion or otherwise shifted its position from Freeland’s 2024 remarks.

Shipley said he has proposed a consumer bill of rights for every vehicle connected 24-7 to the internet, which would include requiring manufacturers to issue security updates when flaws are found in software and to have mandatory testing for new and emerging cyber threats.

Drivers should also be able to disconnect their vehicles from the internet in the event of a security breach and still be able to drive like normal, he added.

“There was a hack I watched in Las Vegas where someone figured out how to hack a car dealer network and then trace individual vehicles, be able to find their location and more,” he said. “And that creates all kinds of privacy, but also safety, risks for folks like victims of intimate partner violence. These are clear.

“We’ve known for 10 years that you could remotely, over the internet, take control of certain vehicles and potentially cause life-threatening situations. And we’ve done nothing.”

With files from Global News’ Sophall Duch and Touria Izri