From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Scott McGregor

Scott McGregor warns BC Ferries’ contract with a Chinese state-owned shipbuilder reveals Canada’s failure to align procurement with national security. It is trading short-term savings for long-term sovereignty and strategic vulnerability.

BC Ferries’ recent decision to award the construction of four new vessels to China Merchants Industry (Weihai), a state-owned shipyard under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is a cautionary tale of strategic policy failure. While framed as a cost-effective solution to replace aging vessels, the agreement reveals a more critical issue: Canada’s persistent failure to align vital infrastructure procurement with national security and economic resilience.

The situation goes beyond transportation. It is a governance failure at the intersection of trade, security, and sovereignty.

Outsourcing Sovereignty

China Merchants Industry is part of a sprawling state-owned conglomerate, closely connected to the CCP. It is not merely a commercial player; it is a geopolitical actor. In China, these organizations thrive on a unique blend of state subsidies, long-term strategic direction, and complex corporate structures that often operate in the shadows. This combination grants them a significant competitive edge, allowing them to navigate the business landscape with an advantage that many try to replicate but few can match.

The same firms supplying ferries to BC are also building warships for the People’s Liberation Army Navy. That alone should give pause.

Yet BC Ferries, under provincial oversight, proceeded without meaningful scrutiny of these risks. No Canadian shipyards submitted bids due to capacity constraints and a lack of strategic investment. But choosing a Chinese state-owned enterprise by default is not a neutral act. It is the consequence of neglecting industrial policy.

Hybrid Risk, Not Just Hybrid Propulsion

China’s dominance in shipbuilding, now over 60% of global orders, has not occurred by chance. It is the result of state-driven market distortion, designed to entrench foreign dependence on Chinese industrial capacity.

Once that dependency forms, Beijing holds leverage. It can slow parts shipments, withhold technical updates, or retaliate economically in response to diplomatic friction. This is not speculative; it has already happened in sectors such as canola, critical minerals, and telecommunications.

Ordering a ferry, on its face, might seem apolitical. But if the shipbuilder is state-owned, its obligations to the CCP outweigh any commercial contract. That is the nature of hybrid threats to security: they appear benign until they are not.

Hybrid warfare combines conventional military force with non-military tactics (such as cyber attacks, disinformation, economic coercion, and the use of state-owned enterprises) to undermine a target country’s stability, influence decisions, or gain strategic control without resorting to open conflict. It exploits legal grey zones and democratic weaknesses, making threats appear benign until they’ve done lasting damage.

A Policy Void, Not Just a Procurement Gap

Ottawa designed its National Shipbuilding Strategy to rebuild Canadian capability, but it has failed to scale quickly enough. The provinces, including British Columbia, have been left to procure vessels without the tools or frameworks to evaluate foreign strategic risk. Provincial procurement rules treat a state-owned bidder the same as a private one. That is no longer defensible.

Canada must close this gap through deliberate, security-informed policy. Three steps are essential for the task:
Ottawa should mandate National Security reviews for critical infrastructure contracts. Any procurement involving foreign state-owned enterprises must trigger a formal security and economic resilience assessment. This should apply at the federal and provincial levels.
Secondly, when necessary, Canada should enhance its domestic industrial capabilities through strategic investments. Canada cannot claim to be powerless when there are no local bids available. Federal and provincial governments could collaborate to invest in scalable civilian shipbuilding, in addition to military contracts. Otherwise, we risk becoming repeatedly dependent on external sources.

Canada should enhance Crown oversight by implementing intelligence-led risk frameworks. This means that agencies, such as BC Ferries, must develop procurement protocols that are informed by threat intelligence rather than just cost analysis. It also involves incorporating security and foreign interference risk indicators into their Requests for Proposals (RFPs).

The Cost of Strategic Amnesia

The central point here is not only about China; it is primarily about Canada. The country needs more strategic foresight. If we cannot align our economic decisions with our fundamental security posture, we will likely continue to cede control of our critical systems, whether in transportation, healthcare, mining, or telecommunications, to adversarial regimes. That is a textbook vulnerability in the era of hybrid warfare.

BC Ferries may have saved money today. But without urgent policy reform, the long-term cost will be paid in diminished sovereignty, reduced resilience, and an emboldened adversary with one more lever inside our critical infrastructure.

Scott McGregor is a senior security advisor to the Council on Countering Hybrid Warfare and Managing Partner at Close Hold Intelligence Consulting Ltd.

By Martin Armstrong

@miss_stacey_

Biden, Clinton, Obama & Harris on Iran #biden #clinton #obama #harris #trump #iran #nuclear

♬ original sound – Stacey

Iran has been the target for decades. Biden, Harris, and Clinton—all the Democrats have said that they would attack Iran if given the opportunity. It appears that Donald Trump is attempting to mitigate a potentially irresolvable situation. As he bluntly told reporters: We basically — we have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f‑‑‑ they’re doing.”

A portion of the nation believes Trump acted like a dictator by attacking Iran without Congressional approval. I explained how former President Barack Obama decimated the War Powers Resolution Act when he decided Libya was overdue for a regime change. The War Powers Act, or War Powers Resolution of 1973, grants the POTUS the ability to send American troops into battle if Congress receives a 48-hour notice. The stipulation here is that troops cannot remain in battle for over 60 days unless Congress authorizes a declaration of war. Congress could also remove US forces at any time by passing a resolution.

Libya is one of seven nations that Obama bombed without Congressional approval, yet no one remembers him as a wartime president, as the United States was not technically at war. Over 26,000 bombs were deployed across 7 nations under his command in 2016 alone. Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and Pakistan were attacked without a single vote. Donald Trump’s recent orders saw 36 bombs deployed in Iran.

The majority of those bombings happened in Syria, Libya, and Iraq under the premise of targeting extremist groups like ISIS. Drone strikes were carried out across Somalia, Yemen, and Pakistan as the Obama Administration accused those nations of hosting al-Qaeda affiliated groups. Coincidentally, USAID was also providing funding to those groups.

The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) was initially implemented to hunt down the Taliban and al-Qaeda after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Obama broadened his interpretation of the AUMF and incorporated newly formed militant groups that were allegedly expanding across the entire Middle East. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism believes there were up to 1,100 civilian casualties in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Thousands of civilians died in Syria and Iraq but the death toll was never calculated. At least 100 innocent people died in the 2016 attacks in Afghanistan alone.

The government will always augment the law for their personal agenda. The War Powers Resolution was ignored and the AUMF was altered. Congress was, however, successful in preventing Obama from putting US troops on the ground and fighting a full-scale war. In 2013, Obama sought congressional approval for military action in Syria but was denied. Obama again attempted to deploy troops in 2015 but was denied. Congress has to redraft the AUMF to specifically prevent Obama from deploying troops in the Middle East. “The authorization… does not authorize the use of the United States Armed Forces on the ground in Syria for the purpose of combat operations.” Obama attempted to redraft the AUMF on his own by insisting he would prohibit  “enduring offensive ground combat operations” or long-term deployment of troops. He was met with bipartisan disapproval as both sides believed he was attempting to drag the United States into another unnecessary war.

The United States should not be involved in any of these battles, but here we are. Those living in fear that Donald Trump is a dictator fail to recognize that past leadership had every intention of sending American men and women into battle unilaterally without a single vote cast.