A member of the media tries out new Huawei Honor 20 series of phones following their global launch in London, May 21, 2019. After the U.S. banned Huawei and its subsidiaries in 2019 over security concerns, Huawei sold Honor to majority-owner Shenzhen Zhixin, a state-owned municipal economic group.Alastair Grant/The Associated Press
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.
Honor operates in 100 markets across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia-Pacific regions, according to the company’s website, though its devices are not currently available in the U.S. Honor runs its own user interface, MagicOS, which operates on top of the standard Android system, and its new devices have full access to the Google Play store and Google Mobile Services.
Mr. Palmer said the company has a responsibility to show that it is operating “with the highest integrity.”
In a 44-page white paper published in 2025, the company said that privacy is a “fundamental right of users,” and said it “strictly complies with the legal and regulatory requirements for cross-border transfer of personal data in the countries or regions where the business is located.”
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When asked if Beijing could require Honor to hand over customer data, Mr. Palmer said that companies in many jurisdictions face requests by governments “for access to any number of different things.”
“I don’t think it’s a fair assertion to say that Honor is an extension of the state,” he said.
Honor’s devices would need to meet a number of existing standards set out by the government to be allowed to connect to Canadian telecom networks, Mr. Palmer said. Honor has not yet set a target timeline for a Canadian rollout.
Relations between China and Canada have improved in recent months, as Prime Minister Mark Carney has sought to diversify Canada’s trade partnerships. Honor’s team first became interested in exploring a Canadian expansion after Mr. Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he discussed how Canada was seeking to build strategic economic autonomy.
In January, Canada set a goal to increase exports to China by 50 per cent by 2030, and announced a deal with the country to allow 49,000 Chinese-made EVs into Canada at a low tariff rate. The deal was in return for significant reductions in Beijing’s levies on canola seed, and a promised elimination of Chinese tariffs on a host of other Canadian-made products.
Speaking at an event at the C.D. Howe Institute in May, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said that Canadians should look at the places she has visited recently to get a sense of “where we are moving, economically.”
“China, India, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Mexico. Five major jurisdictions, five major economies,” she said.
She added that in talks with foreign countries, she raises questions and concerns about human rights, foreign interference and international law.
“My approach to diplomacy is as follows: We will not be effective if we walk away from the table and say, ‘We cannot associate with this jurisdiction.’”