Liberals resist disclosing details about fired Canadian scientists

For months, the head of the Public Health Agency of Canada has resisted calls to provide information to a Parliamentary committee around why the two Canadian scientists, Xiangguo Qiu and Keding Cheng, were fired in January

OTTAWA — Opposition parties are right to be suspicious of the Liberal government’s efforts to withhold details around the firing of two scientists from a high-security infectious disease lab earlier this year, according to one expert on Parliamentary accountability.

For months, the head of the Public Health Agency of Canada has resisted calls to provide information to a Parliamentary committee around why the two Canadian scientists, Xiangguo Qiu and Keding Cheng, were fired in January. The committee’s latest efforts on Monday to view documents related to the firings have also been resisted by the government, who says it would breach the Privacy Act and jeopardize national security.

Kathy Brock, professor at Queen’s University and an expert on issues of Parliamentary process and accountability, said the legal argument presented by the federal government could potentially be valid, but nonetheless appears to follow a trend of lacking transparency by the Trudeau government.

The Liberals, she said, have refused to release documents related to everything from the Snc-lavalin scandal, to calls for a partial disclosure of contracts signed with COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers, citing cabinet confidences and the need to protect commercial sensitivity, respectively. Government has also redacted documents tied to the WE Charity scandal as well as recent calls for more details around the procurement practices of Shared Services Canada.

“Given the reluctance of the federal government to respond to a lot of fairly reasonable requests that have come up, and the way it’s controlled any communications and messaging on issues that are sensitive to the government, the opposition parties have a legitimate basis for being suspicious,” Brock said.

Her comments come as members of a special committee on Canada-china relations passed a motion on Monday evening that gives PHAC no more than 10 days to provide un-redacted documents around the firings, which would be passed along to the House of Commons law clerk. Members of the committee would review the documents privately to ensure against a leak of potentially sensitive information, the motion says.

The two scientists were escorted out of Canada’s only Level-4 security lab in Winnipeg in July 2019, four months after the facility shipped Ebola and Henipah viruses to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. They were fired in January 2021, and were stripped of their security clearances by authorities.

Canadian officials have said the shipments are not related to the outbreak of COVID-19, which was first detected in Wuhan. The federal health agency said the shipments and Qiu’s firing are also not connected.

Opposition members and even some Liberals, have say PHAC should nonetheless provide documentation on the matter, saying it could be of extremely high public interest.