TORONTO—The engineer arrested for allegedly trying to pass sensitive documents about Canada’s Arctic patrol ships to Beijing was a strong supporter of communist China, according to his former employer.
When Qing Quentin Huang worked at Alberni Engineering Inc. on Vancouver Island a decade ago, he was known for his outspoken views on China and its communist system, Ron Van Wachem said.
“He was against capitalism, that’s the way he talked, one of those kind of guys,” said Mr. Van Wachem, president of Nanaimo Shipyards, which owns Alberni. “He was pretty supportive of the government.”
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Mr. Huang, 53, has been charged under the Security of Information Act with two counts of attempting to “communicate to a foreign entity” information that the Canadian government “is taking measures to safeguard.”
He had allegedly contacted the Chinese embassy in Ottawa offering up documents on Canada’s national shipbuilding program, which his firm, Lloyd’s Register Canada, was working on.
Ian Smith / Postmedia News file
In an interview, Mr. Van Wachem said Mr. Huang had trouble finding a job when he first arrived in Canada in 2001. Desperate to find work so he could bring his son to Canada, he ended up in Port Alberni, B.C.
“One of the reasons he wanted to get into Canada, I think, was to get his son out of China and away from his ex-wife. I think that’s one of the things that was going on, too,” Mr. Van Wachem said.
He said Mr. Huang was very intelligent and even played three-dimensional chess. “He’s a pretty smart guy but he was an academic, put it that way. You’ve got to be able to use your information in a business-type way and he wasn’t that good at that.”
Mr. Van Wachem said he would sometimes clash over politics with Mr. Huang, whom he said was so pro-China that a client once commented he might be working for the communist government.
“We were building a yacht for an American guy at the time and the American guy said to me, ‘That guy’s a spy.’ We used to laugh. That’s exactly what his comment was, because of his political views. So I phoned that guy up yesterday and said, ‘You better go look at the news.’”
Mr. Van Wachem said Mr. Huang’s employment records at Alberni had been deleted but that he had worked for the company until 2003 or 2004.
The naval architect and engineer spent five years in B.C. before moving to Waterdown, Ont., to work at the Lloyd’s office in Burlington.
The company was subcontracted to work on the Arctic patrol vessels the government is building but Mr. Huang was not involved in the project because he lacked the required security clearance.
On Nov. 25, he allegedly contacted the Chinese embassy in Ottawa about passing on information about the project, according to sources. The approach was detected by the Canadian security Intelligence Service, which notified the RCMP.
Peter J. Thompson/National Post
An undercover operation called Project Seascape unfolded in Toronto on Saturday Nov. 30 and police allegedly caught Mr. Huang discussing relaying sensitive documents. He was arrested that afternoon in Burlington.
Ray Boisvert, a former senior CSIS official, said revenge and greed were usually factors among those who turned to espionage. He said it was also often “about divided loyalties or lack of identity with his society, organization or nation.”
Several sources said Mr. Huang was unhappy about being excluded from the patrol vessel project. Police said he had no known accomplices and this was not a case of “state-sponsored” espionage.
The Chinese government denied Monday that Mr. Huang had furnished any documents. “The remarks saying that a Canadian-Chinese male provided the Chinese government with confidential information is totally groundless,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, told reporters.
He is scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday morning.
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