It seems the Canadian government is insistent on letting BlackBerry die, preferring to keep it as an ailing standalone company with a rather paltry $1 billion investment rather than see it in the hands of another company — well at least that’s how it seems with the Canadian government making it very clear to BlackBerry’s leadership team that it would block any Chinese company from taking over the company.
The latest revelation comes from sources speaking to The Globe and Mail, who claim that Lenovo had pursued a bid to buy the Canadian smartphone manufacturer, but BlackBerry never submitted a formal proposal out of fears of a rejection from the Canadian government. The reasoning behind the Canadian opposition to BlackBerry being bought by a Chinese company appears to be because of how deeply tied the company and Canada’s telecom infrastructure is, with this just being the latest show of paranoia from the Canadian government when it comes to Chinese companies.
In 2012 a senior spokesman for Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper echoed concerns over Chinese companies in a public statement saying: “I’ll leave it to you if you think that Huawei should be a part of [the] Canadian government security system.”