After years of Conservatives fighting to get Huawei banned from Canada’s 5G networks and telecommunication systems, the federal government finally made the announcement.

MPs Francois-Philippe Champagne and Marco Mendicino made the announcement. ZTE, another Chinese company, has also been banned from Canada’s 5G network.

Canada is the last of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance (also known as the Anglosphere) to ban the Chinese Communist Party-run company.

While much of Canada’s 5G is reliant on Huawei technology, companies have been anticipating the ban and moving away from reliance on their equipment. Thus, the ban shouldn’t affect Canada’s infrastructure too much.

Many believe reluctance on the part of Trudeau to ban Huawei stemmed from the unjustifiable imprisonment of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in China in what appears to be a clear-cut case of retaliation for the detention of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in Canada on behalf of the US over wire fraud charges.

In December 2018, Wanzhou was infamously detained at Vancouver International Airport on a US warrant related to Huawei’s business in Iran. She spent the entirety of her detainment under house arrest in her mansion in Vancouver ever since.

In response to her detainment, China almost immediately arrested two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, on baseless espionage charges only days after in what many call retaliation for Canada’s part in the diplomatic tussle.

Spavor was charged with eleven years in a Chinese prison, while Korvig was never sentenced. They were both imprisoned for over 1,000 days.They were finally released in September 2021, almost immediately after the release of Wanzhou.