Finally! A Commons committee will sit to shed light on an incredible espionage case. China, for years, stole information from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Canada’s main virus research center. This laboratory is one of the few in North America capable of handling pathogens requiring the highest level of containment (level 4), such as Ebola.
The parliamentary committee may call any witnesses it deems relevant. Its first session could take place as early as the beginning of next week.
It will be based on hundreds of documents that the Liberal government has just made public linked to the dismissal of two Chinese scientists, the DD Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng, who worked at the Winnipeg lab.
Disappeared without a trace
The two researchers were fired in 2019 after sending samples of the viruses, including Ebola, to the Chinese Institute of Virology in Wuhan. But their dismissals were only announced in January 2021 when CSIS sounded the alert about Qiu: his “close and clandestine relationships with various Chinese entities thus constituting a threat to the security of Canada”.
It was not until February 2020 that the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) determined that the couple had stolen viruses and had allowed “visitors to seize government property without authorization.”
I can’t wait to see the people in charge of the Lab, which reports to PHAC, come and explain the fiasco. And how could we allow the two spies to disappear without a trace? Why didn’t the RCMP arrest them?
One of two things. Or they returned to China, which is more likely. And we let them go! Like that! Or they asked for political asylum and we accepted on the condition that they reveal all the details of their espionage mission. Possible, but it would surprise me.
Another Chinese specter haunting Trudeau
Until now, when the Conservatives, the NDP and the Bloc Québécois asked for explanations on this strange affair, Justin Trudeau refused to comment, saying that it could harm national security and ongoing investigations. This is what governments always say to prevent their gaffes, their stupidities and their errors from being made public.
The members of the Commission will have to discover how these two Chinese spies were incredibly able to steal samples of some of the deadliest viruses in the world and bring them to China, a country in conflict with Canada.
They will also want to know how this couple linked to the Chinese army was able to obtain the highest level security clearances to access the secrets of the most secure Canadian laboratory.
Qiu worked in both Winnipeg and Wuhan
In one of the CSIS documents released Wednesday by the federal government, we learn that Qiu lied several times during interrogation. So she told investigators that she took two months of vacation in China every year. In reality, she worked there at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, according to what CSIS discovered.
If China is interested in developing diagnostic tests, vaccines and treatments for acute viral hemorrhagic fever Ebola, it is undoubtedly because it is investing in regions of Africa affected by this virus.