Battle to unravel Winnipeg lab mystery
TORIES THREATEN BOYCOTT IN BID TO SEE KEY DOCS
The Conservatives on Thursday threatened to boycott a key intelligence oversight body, marking a sharp escalation in political pressure over the government's withholding of documents that might explain why two scientists were fired from a high-security infectious disease lab earlier this year.
The ramp-up comes as opposition members also voted on Thursday to declare the Public Health Agency of Canada in contempt of Parliament for declining to provide the top-secret details surrounding the matter.
For weeks, opposition members have remained in a parliamentary deadlock with the Liberal government as they try to obtain hundreds of pages of documents related to the operations of the National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg, whose collaborations with Chinese military researchers has raised alarm in Canada's intelligence community. Two scientists — Dr. Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng — were fired from the NML in January for undisclosed reasons amid an RCMP investigation.
The Public Health Agency of Canada, who oversees the facility, has repeatedly said that tabling such sensitive information would amount to a breach of national security, and could potentially interfere with an ongoing police investigation. Liberal ministers have made similar claims, and have instead referred the documents to the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP), a body established by Justin Trudeau that oversees Ottawa's intelligence services. In a letter to the prime minister on Thursday, Conservative Leader Erin O'toole said his party would no longer participate in the NSICOP, saying such a move “would only legitimize your unethical conduct.” Recent appointments by Trudeau to the committee, O'toole said in the letter, “are now suspect and erode confidence in this committee.”
Separately, Conservative, NDP and Bloc Québécois members outvoted the Liberals 176-150 on the contempt of Parliament motion, which calls on PHAC president Iain Stewart to appear before the bar of the House of Commons on Monday to be admonished for withholding the information.
Adding to that claim, House Speaker Anthony Rota on Wednesday ruled that the government's refusal to table the information before the committee was a defiance of Parliament, undermining its unlimited power to order documents.
Still, some observers say Rota's decision sets a potentially dangerous precedent, in which Canadian officials unknowingly divulge highly sensitive intelligence gathered by allies. Many experts say concerns about the operations of the NML, including potential collaborations with Chinese state actors, is likely to have come from U.S. or other allied intelligence bodies, who would not appreciate that information being debated openly in Canada's Parliament.
“I'm deeply concerned that this move undermines NSICOP,” said Stephanie Carvin, professor at Carleton University's Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. “This is kind of a bulldozer move.”
Conservative members, for their part, say parliamentary committees are properly equipped to handle sensitive information, and would view the documents in private under the supervision of the House law clerk.
Meanwhile, the prime minister controls NSICOP and can manipulate any of its findings, opposition members say.
“These members can be removed by the prime minister,” Conservative MP John Williamson said in committee earlier this week. “The prime minister can change the report. So, it's not arm's length, it is actually just an instrument of the prime minister, not of Parliament.”
Carvin said it is technically true that Trudeau's office could alter any final report on the issue.
But members of NSICOP, including opposition members, could easily raise generalized concerns over changes introduced by the Prime Minister's Office, she said, as a way to alert the public to those alterations.
“The fact that we're a net consumer of intelligence means we need to be extremely careful in how we handle this material,” she said. “There seems to be no reflection on any of these issues whatsoever in this demand for information.”
NSICOP was formed in 2018 in an effort to oversee intelligence services in Canada, and operates as an arm of the executive branch rather than of Parliament.
The 10-member committee is composed of seven MPS and three senators from all major parties, each appointed on the advice of the prime minister.
Most experts are widely in agreement that the Winnipeg lab breach is evidence of an overly relaxed attitude in Canada toward efforts by the Chinese government to secure foreign intellectual property, whether in the area of biological or technological research.
The Communist Party of China has been known to infiltrate foreign powers through a range of avenues, including its Thousands Talents Program under which it recruits leading scientists and engineers from overseas.
U.S. authorities have arrested several researchers in connection with Thousand Talents, charging that the program was used to steal sensitive intellectual property used by the Chinese government and military.
Seven scientists at the NML have conducted experiments and co-authored studies on infectious diseases alongside Chinese military researchers, as first reported by the Globe and Mail last month. Feihu Yan, of the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) Academy of Military Medical Sciences, worked for a time at the Winnipeg lab and was occasionally listed as an affiliate of the facility.
Canadian academics in particular have signed countless research agreements with Chinese researchers, often with sizable funding arrangements.
“The research culture seems to have taken priority over the national security culture,” said Christian Leuprecht, professor at the Royal Military College of Canada and Queen's University.
The NML is Canada's only level-4 security laboratory, equipped to handle some of the world's most deadly pathogens.
“There's only so many of these labs around in the Western world, let alone among the Five Eyes,” Leuprecht said. “So if you're going to try to infiltrate one, you're going to try to pick the weakest link. And so once again, it turns out, that Canada was the weakest link.”
In 2019, the facility transferred Ebola and Henipah viruses to China's Wuhan Institute of Virology, just months before the two scientists were escorted out of the Winnipeg lab by Canadian authorities.
Health Minister Patty Hajdu, in committee testimony earlier this week, clarified that there was “no connection” between the shipment of the viruses and the firing of the scientists.
AND SO ONCE
AGAIN, IT TURNS OUT, THAT CANADA
WAS THE WEAKEST LINK.