We cannot say that the Liberals lack perseverance. They continue to fight to shed the thinnest possible light on Beijing’s attempts at interference.
Their most recent attempt took place in parliamentary committee. On Tuesday, their MPs tried to limit the duration of work on the major security breach at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg. Fortunately, it didn’t work. The oppositions, the majority, succeeded in moving the work forward.
Perhaps you have forgotten this astonishing story.
This laboratory is the only one in the country with level 4, the highest security category. The most dangerous pathogens in the world are handled there.
Two researchers of Chinese origin, Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng, worked there. Starting in 2016, they made several trips to China without telling their superiors. They collaborated with military-related researchers and participated in a recruitment program for the Communist Party. They also went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
They also invited Chinese researchers to the Winnipeg laboratory, without warning their superiors. These colleagues were able to move freely on the premises.
None of this had been detected. Then, in September 2018, we realized that a patent had been registered in their name in China for an Ebola inhibitor1.
PHOTO TAKEN FROM A VIDEO BROADCAST BY RIDEAU HALL
Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng
Despite everything, they remained employees of the Winnipeg laboratory. In March 2019, they managed to send samples of the Ebola and Nipah viruses to China. It took until July 2019 before they were kicked out of the laboratory. Since then, they have been working in China under new names.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) was not initially suspicious. In 2020, he judged these scientists likely to be influenced by Chinese agents, without believing that they themselves could actively collaborate with the regime.
Their opinion has changed. The DD Qiu has developed “deep relationships with several institutions [chinoises] » and “intentionally transferred scientific material and knowledge”, maintains CSIS. The agency speaks of a “real and credible threat” to the economic security of the country.
When the evidence emerged, the Trudeau government did not want to see it. Or, at least, he hid them.
Mr. Trudeau cited privacy issues. He then spoke of fears for national security. And, indeed, not everything can be revealed. But that does not justify the extent of the secrecy.
And the Prime Minister went even further. He accused his opponents of intolerance. “I hope my colleagues in the Conservative Party are not fueling fear about Asian Canadians,” he said.
Mr. Trudeau deplored the fact that “the loyalty” of citizens was being called into question because of their ethnic origin. He boasted of defending “diversity” in research.
Meanwhile, China also took up the diversity discourse by claiming that if Canada denounced the detention of the two Michaels, it was because of its “white supremacism”…
In both cases, these clawbacks are abhorrent.
Canada has a sad history of anti-Chinese racism, as evidenced by Chinese Immigration Act adopted in 1923, which closed the door to these arrivals and their families and subjected them to constant police checks2.
And it is true that during the pandemic, a wave of intolerance towards people of Chinese origin has broken out.
But in Ottawa, Tibetan, Uyghur and Hong Kong citizens warned parliamentarians not to use the fight against racism to silence legitimate criticism of the Beijing regime.
Chinese nationals who were victims of clandestine police stations repeated the same thing.
Our allies, starting with the United States, must not have been impressed by this mixture of recovery and laxity.
Little by little, the light is coming.
Backed against the wall, the Trudeau government ended up launching a commission of inquiry into foreign interference – the interim report from Judge Marie-Josée Hogue will be presented in May.
The Liberals are working on creating a register of foreign agents – they have been talking about it for years, without result, but it could perhaps be resolved one day.
Forced by the Conservatives, Bloc and New Democrats, they also created a committee of parliamentarians and judges to choose what information could be made public about the Winnipeg laboratory. More than 600 pages were revealed at the end of February.
Liberal Yasir Naqvi says he fears that the opposition will hijack the exercise to “score political points”. It’s not impossible. But from the start, the Liberals have done more than their share in this area.
Despite them, we end up learning a little more. But it shouldn’t be so slow, and so painful.
1. Read “Investigation on a couple of researchers: espionage and Ebola in the lab”
2. A recent exhibition at the McCord Museum evoked this sad episode in our history.
Read “A coffee with… Karen Tam: between the neighbors, mountains”