While the list of prohibited organizations claims to be “country agnostic” and “does not target or profile any group of people or country,” this is clearly not the case. Over 80 per cent of the institutions named are in China, with the remainder in Russia or Iran. The list seems to have been cobbled together from similar lists compiled by the Pentagon and conservative think-tanks such as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute without any further justification other than the overseas institutions ‘may pose a risk to Canada’s national security.”
While Canadian researchers are forbidden to work with the 80% Chinese researchers, European/Asian researchers keep working on the subject, pushing Canada further back.
Why would CSIS worry about domains like AI and Materials where Canada is quite behind China and 99% of the research will become public anyways? Are they also requiring Asian/European collaborators to not share the findings with banned Chinese institutions?