The central figure in the case is Yuekang Li, a citizen of China, who was accepted into the Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering PhD program of the University of Waterloo. Li stated in his application that his goal was to return to his home country after receiving his PhD and work to “improve its public health system”. However, when Li applied for a graduate student visa, his application was denied by an officer of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the government department that oversees applications for entry visas into the country.

In deeming Li inadmissible to Canada, the IRCC officer in charge of his case reportedly cited the student’s strong interest in microfluidics, a niche branch of nanotechnology with a wide range of applications in the biopharmaceutical industry. The IRCC officer also noted growing concerns in the West about the use of students and researchers as “non-traditional collectors of information” by the government in Beijing. In a number of such cases, Chinese students and researchers have been given permission by the Chinese state to work abroad with the understanding that they will deliberately collect information that will benefit China’s military-industrial complex.

Li promptly challenged the IRCC’s decision, which ended up being heard in Federal Court. Li’s legal representatives argued that the rejection of his application for a student visa relied on “an overly broad definition of espionage” and engaged in “speculation”, rather than factual evidence. But on December 22, Federal Court Chief Justice Paul Crampton sided with the IRCC.

In his decision, which was made available late last week, the judge agrees with the IRCC’s view that the graduate research Li proposed to carry out at the University of Waterloo would fall under the definition of “non-traditional espionage”. He referred to China as a “hostile actor” and cautioned that such actors “increasingly make use of non-traditional methods to obtain sensitive information in Canada or abroad, contrary to Canada’s interests”. Given that new reality, Canada’s legal understanding of what constitutes “espionage” must evolve”, Judge Crampton argues in his decision.