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That said, this basic fact seems to escape the federal Liberal government. The clock is ticking for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet to decide whether they will permit Huawei to play a role in devising the underbelly of Canada’s new 5G telecommunications grid.

Former Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale repeatedly said that they continued to sift through all of the evidence and an answer would be coming after the election. Well, here we are and security hawks are nervous that any minute now the government will make their decision – and that it will be the wrong one.

This enhanced connectivity will mean not just faster download speeds but will also greatly speed up the arrival of the Internet of Things, where all of our personal electronics and home appliances are online and communicating with each other.

It at first sounds like a zany conspiracy theory to even suggest that the Chinese government would attempt to tap into the electronic devices of people in Canada to spy on them. It becomes more realistic though when you think about who we’re dealing with and the way we live now.

Think of the expansive police state that spied on people in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. That was at a time when their technology was limited to crude listening devices. With today’s technology, such an apparatus could be enhanced hundreds of times over.

Back in 2013, it was revealed that a staggering two million people were employed in China to police the internet. This included government employees as well as individuals embedded in private companies.