The Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS, said in a report this week that more than two dozen countries are engaging in economic espionage, and Canadian interests have been affected even by governments considered "friendly."
The CSIS warned Canadian business executives in 1992 not to fly Air France after it discovered the French intelligence service was bugging airline seats and using undercover agents to pose as flight attendants.The CSIS is charged with safeguarding national security, much like the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
The agency said at least one company had lost a major contract because foreign competitors were able to get precise details of its tender through their government.
"Studies conducted in 1990-91 led to the observation that a small group of leading-edge companies in Canada had been targeted by foreign intelligence services between 1980 and 1990," the CSIS said in its annual security report to Parliament.
As countries become more concerned with economic decline than with military might in the post-Cold War era, government intelligence services have increasingly turned to stealing proprietory information, the agency warned.
The CSIS said China and Russia continue to operate spy networks in Canada and their focus has increasingly become the search for commercial rather than military secrets.
The Canadian intelligence service believes Asian countries are the most actively engaged in economic espionage today, followed by Western European nations.
Hughes Aircraft Corp pulled out of the Le Bourget air show last year after warnings from the State Department's Overseas Advisory Council about France spying on U.S. firms.
The head of the French secret service, Claude Silberzahn, was dismissed following revelations that France was spying on high-tech and defense companies of its Western allies.