Canadian Members of Parliament vs Canadian Prime Minister

"How could scientists with deep connections to the Chinese military be able to gain access to a high-level Canadian security-cleared laboratory with the world's most dangerous viruses?"

Conservative MP John Williamson

"We will not give in to pandering to anti-Asian racism."

"We have seen enough of a rise in intolerance across the country these past months."

"We need to continue to stand strong in supporting diversity."

Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

"Nobody in this House [Parliament; House of Commons] is suggesting that COVID-19 was manufactured in the Winnipeg lab or that coronviruses were at any point transferred from Canada to China."

"But we are questioning the level of co-operation in general that seems to have been taking place between Winnipeg and its various Chinese military affiliate labs, including the one in Wuhan."

Conservative MP Garnett Genius

"We know full well that biological warfare is forbidden internationally."

"We know, however, that there's a certain number of states that are delinquents. Therefore, we have to tighten up security, to ensure that we avoid letting Canadian research fall into the wrong hands."

Bloc MP Stephane Bergeron

 

"The power of Parliament to send for papers is absolute, that is a very well established privilege and power that we have in this place."

"And while the Liberals may rightly have concerns about the sensitive nature of the documents, there are no arguments that can be made against Parliament’s right to send for these papers."

NDP MP Alistair MacGregor

The National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg where scientists Xiangguo Qiu and Keding Cheng worked until they were escorted out in July 2019, and finally fired in January 2021. Photo by Michel Comte/AFP via Getty Images/File

Canadian Members of Parliament want answers from the Government of Canada, led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, just why it is and how it can be that Canada's only level-4 security laboratory where scientists work with lethal pathogens, appears to have collaborated with Chinese scientists directly engaged with the People's Liberation Army. Hours of debate, with Conservative, NDP and Bloc Quebecois Members of Parliament repeatedly asking the prime minister to explain the situation. A hostile country like China, a known predator of other nations' discoveries and formulations given free rein to spy and indulge in espionage to abscond with top secrets.

It is typical of the prime minister to evade, to equivocate, to refuse accountability, to accuse others of racism and the airing of government top-secret files to throw off the scent of malfeasance. Racism has nothing whatever to do with perfectly legitimate questions badly in need of explanations given the quality of relationship between Canada and China, questionable in that a democratic country that prides itself on its human rights record maintains ties with a hostile, intrusive and threatening country that abuses human rights.

Winnipeg's high-security National Microbiology Laboratory had questionable ties with Chinese scientists whose loyalty was not to science and Canada, but to the Chinese military. This is a research facility conducting experiments and studies on infectious diseases which shared their premises and findings with Chinese military researchers. Foreign affairs experts and former national security officials gave warning that China makes use of foreign collaborations to advance their own military research.

 

Security personnel gather near the entrance of the Wuhan Institute of Virology during a visit by the World Health Organization team in Wuhan in China's Hubei province on Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2021. (Ng Hah Guan/AP Photo)

 

The most incautious of collaboration taking place with the certain knowledge that China's military research includes "gain-of-function" research, involving experimentation to deliberately infuse known pathogens with deadlier and more contagious functions. Otherwise known as germ-warfare techniques, knowledge that could be shelved, but end-products that could also be put into odious use.

Conservative Member of Parliament and foreign affairs critic Michael Chong requested the release for study by parliamentarians of hundreds of pages of unredacted documents from the federal public health agency, backgrounded by a previous request and receipt of documents requested by a parliamentary committee whose contents had been heavily blacked out rendering them completely opaque, and useless for the purpose for which they were intended.

The federal government insists that a release of this kind of information would represent a breach of national security, resorting to charges of racism when the requests continued to be pursued, a typical rejoinder by a government unwilling to make its decisions and behaviours open to transparent scrutiny. In this instance it is the case of Dr.Xianggu Qiu along with her biologist husband, Keding Cheng who were in July of 2019 escorted from the National Microbiology Laboratory where both worked. The facility had provided China's Wuhan Institute of Virology with Ebola and Henipah viruses.

The linkage of the two Chinese scientists with an as-yet unrevealed series of events, including the transfer of the viruses led to their undergoing a police investigation and their eventual dismissal in January of 2021, their security clearances revoked. Equipped to handle some of the deadliest known infectious diseases, the Winnipeg high-security laboratory is the sole level-4 security lab in the country where seven scientists conduced experiments and co-authored studies on infectious diseases with Chinese military researchers.

"It is ill-advised. It is the top lab in Canada. It is just incredible naiveté on their part."

"[It is also astounding that PHAC allowed a PLA scientist into the Winnipeg lab that requires the highest-level security clearance to gain entry]."

"We won’t let a Canadian in unless we have done a deep background check, but we let [someone] in that we don’t know anything about. It doesn’t make sense."

Andy Ellis, former CSIS assistant director of operations

For a time, Feihu Yan of the People's Liberation Army's Academy of Military Medical Sciences worked at the Winnipeg laboratory, listed on occasion as an affiliate of the facility. And nor is the connection between the two high-security laboratories; Winnipeg's and Wuhan's, the only peculiar and alarming -- under the circumstances -- connection between Ottawa and Beijing. It was revealed in December of 2019 that the Canadian military had planned joint winter military exercises with the Chinese military, a revelation that shocked and repulsed just as the lab collaboration did.

"Under Xi Jinping, China has turned into a repressive police state equipped with a mass surveillance system the likes of which has never been seen (except in the dystopia of Orwell’s 1984). Its “wolf warrior” would-be diplomats have violated every convention of diplomatic conduct. The state apparatus has weaponized trade to cow adversaries into submission, and, with increasing frequency, it has resorted to kidnapping to coerce and punish those who stand in its way. China has had no compunction in stealing advanced technology from other countries, and has launched cyberattacks against dozens of them."

"Given all this, it boggles the mind that Canada, which prides itself as a beacon of democracy, would consider it appropriate to collaborate with the organization that serves as the spearhead for Beijing’s authoritarian vision. Even more troubling is the possibility that such co-operation could pass on skills which the PLA could use to defeat our allies in battle."

"Canada already has an unenvious reputation for allowing Chinese firms to acquire firms in the defence sector; the idea that we could be training them is abominable. (Another risk is that the PLA is using exchanges and joint training to collect intelligence, especially against other members of the Five Eyes community.)"

J.Michael Cole, iPolitics

Soldiers of China's People's Liberation Army march during the Victory Day Parade in Red Square in Moscow, Russia, on June 24, 2020.    Host photo agency/Reuters