Honor Device Co., Ltd., a Chinese consumer device company and former subsidiary of
Huawei, is lobbying the federal government to allow the sale of its smartphones in Canada.
Honor will attempt to tamp down security concerns that saw its former parent company banned from doing business in Canada. Executives are planning to meet with staff from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada in mid-June, according to Mathew Palmer, a senior vice-president at public affairs firm Weber Shandwick, which is helping the company arrange discussions with the government.
The exact date of the meeting is yet to be determined, he said, but will include a visit by Honor’s leadership to Ottawa. ISED did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“These are introductory discussions, so that the Canadian government can understand who Honor is and who they aren’t, and to ensure regulatory clarity and fair market entry,” Mr. Palmer said.
Honor was founded in 2013 as a sub-brand of Huawei, and produces a range of smartphones, tablets, laptops and other wearable devices. In Britain, its smartphones start at prices roughly equivalent to $220, with some models selling for $1000 or more.
After the U.S. banned Huawei and its subsidiaries in 2019 over security concerns, Huawei sold Honor to majority-owner Shenzhen Zhixin New Information Technology Co., Ltd., a state-owned municipal economic group based in Shenzhen, China.
“We want to make the distinction between economic ownership and a strategic apparatus of the national government,” Mr. Palmer said. “Those two are not interlinked.”
Canada
had a rocky relationship with Honor’s former parent company. Following several of its peers, Canada banned Huawei from operating its networks here in 2022 because of security concerns, and ordered telecom companies to remove Huawei’s radio equipment from their systems. Beijing has disputed that the company’s technology posed privacy concerns.
