As one of the most successful businesses to ever come out of Canada, BlackBerry has deep ties to its home country. Such deep ties, in fact, that Canada's government outright rejected the idea of Lenovo taking over the struggling telecom company. That's according to a report from The Globe and Mail, which says that Ottawa officials "made it clear" that any bid from a Chinese company would be denied by the government over national security concerns, immediately dooming any potential deal that may have been on the table. The government made its position known "over the last one to two months," the report says. Lenovo's interest in BlackBerry was publicly revealed last month, though the PC maker was just one of several rumored bidders.

"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," one Canadian government official told The Globe and Mail, speaking on condition of anonymity. Despite their waning popularity among consumers, BlackBerry devices are commonly used across government agencies, and millions of messages are transferred through the company's systems every day. “I don’t think anybody should be surprised that we would have concerns like that,” said the anonymous official. Yesterday, BlackBerry announced that it has abandoned plans to sell the company off, instead hoping that $1 billion in funding and wide-sweeping changes affecting its executive ranks can help reverse its decline. We've reached out to BlackBerry for more details.