The Canadian government has not allowed Lenovo, a company which has it’s home in Beijing, to place a bid to buy Blackberry because they view it as a security risk, one of potentially national security level.

The security concern for the Canadian government lies in the fact that Blackberry uses telecom infrastructure of Canada, and in its customer database are agencies that work for the government, as well as many Canadian businesses.

Blackberry, which hasn’t been doing that well lately, can’t afford the time it would take to undergo any sort of revue that would come along with Lenovo buying their company.

An anonymous source, who works for the government, spoke to the Globe and Mail about the Canadian government’s decision, which isn’t the first time Canada has blocked a bid by a foreign company on these grounds. “We have been pretty consistent that the message is Canada is open to foreign investment and investment from China in particular but not at the cost of compromising national security.”

He went on to elaborate that the decision was also made because of the particular situation Blackberry and that it is a special case. “This is a company that has built its reputation and built its success on system security and its infrastructure,” they said. “That’s one of the reasons businesses use Blackberry. The security is robust and we’d obviously have an interest in making sure we didn’t do anything or allow anything that would compromise.”

[via The Globe and Mail, image via Carlos Varela flickr]