(Ottawa) The federal Liberal government is moving forward with the creation of a special cross-partisan committee to which security clearance will be granted to allow its members to review secret documents concerning the firing of two scientists from the National Laboratory of microbiology.
Posted at 8:53 p.m.
This committee will be set up with or without the participation of the Conservatives who oppose this idea.
Government House Leader Mark Holland said Wednesday that the NDP had agreed and that he hoped to see the Conservative Party and the Bloc Québécois do the same.
The members of this special committee will be entitled to consult the unredacted versions of the documents, but an independent panel made up of three former judges appointed jointly by all the federal parties will have the final say on the content which can eventually be made public without harming the national security.
Last December, the Conservatives rejected this Liberal proposal. They said they preferred that the documents be simply handed over to a regular committee of MPs.
According to a House of Commons motion, passed by the opposition parties last spring despite opposition from the Liberals, these documents should be analyzed by House legal officers to prevent any risk to national security, but the Members could then decide to make public any information they deem relevant.
In a letter sent in January, Mark Holland urged the Conservatives to revise their position, citing numerous experts who had supported the government’s decision, which fears it will put national security at risk by complying with opposition demands.
On Wednesday, Holland said the joint committee plan respected the Conservatives’ request for access to unredacted documents. He added that if the official opposition remains entrenched in its position, he will have doubts about the sincerity of their demands.
“You cannot on the one hand say that you want to see the documents and then refuse to see them,” he summed up.
According to him, a stubborn refusal by the Conservatives could be explained solely by the desire to drag out the debate for partisan purposes.
Conservative Foreign Affairs Critic Michael Chong reacted late Wednesday evening by saying his party would not participate in the committee. He accused the Liberals of bypassing parliament with the complicity of the New Democrats.
“It is clear that the Liberals are panicking and hiding something by creating this unparliamentary committee. We will continue our efforts to have these documents handed over to a parliamentary committee,” he said.
The Bloc Québécois did not react immediately to the Liberals’ decision.
Opposition parties believe these secret documents will shed light on the mysterious dismissal of Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng. The two scientists had been escorted out of the National Microbiology Laboratory, located in Winnipeg, in July 2019 before being officially discharged in January 2021.
They also want to see documents related to the shipment supervised by Mr.me Qiu of Ebola virus and Nipah virus strains at the Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China in March 2019.
The government wants the committee to get to work as quickly as possible and even says it is ready to move forward without the Conservatives and the Bloc if they are slow to come forward.