Fired Winnipeg Lab Scientists Lied About Relationship With China, Failed to Protect Sensitive Assets: Documents

Liberals and NDP Block Tory Proposal to Review Winnipeg Lab Documents in Committee

March 4, 2024 TruthUSA

A motion by the Tory party to initiate a parliamentary committee investigation into the recently disclosed Winnipeg lab documents, revealing significant security breaches at the high-level security facility, did not garner support from Liberal and NDP MPs.

On March 4, a special session of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics (ETHI) was convened to consider a motion put forth by Tory MP Michael Chong.

After four Conservative MPs voiced their support for the motion, Liberal MP Iqra Khalid proposed to adjourn the debate, effectively terminating the meeting, accusing the official opposition of politicizing the issue. NDP MP Matthew Green backed the motion to adjourn, while Bloc Québécois MP René Villemure opposed it.

Mr. Chong suggested conducting a study based on the government’s findings, which identified the Chinese regime and its entities infiltrating Canada’s top microbiology lab, posing a serious and credible threat to national security.

The motion was introduced shortly after the Liberal government released hundreds of pages of documents detailing the dismissal of two China-linked scientists from the National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg, the only bio-safety level 4 facility in Canada authorized to handle lethal pathogens.

Mr. Chong’s motion aimed to investigate the information transmission within the government and the government’s use of “over-classification” to block Parliament’s access to the documents.

‘Not the End’

The committee session commenced with Liberal MPs protesting that Ms. Khalid wasn’t given the chance to speak earlier in the meeting, with Committee Chair and Tory MP John Brassard listing four Tory MPs before her.

Unable to adjourn the meeting early, Ms. Khalid faced criticism from Conservative MPs for the government’s handling of the situation, from lax lab security to delayed responses and document withholding.

Mr. Chong emphasized to the committee that obtaining the documents marked the beginning, not the conclusion, of the issue. He argued that the breaches at the NML in Winnipeg were indicative of broader lapses in Canada’s national security and highlighted the threat posed by Beijing.

Currently, a public inquiry into foreign interference by Beijing and other entities is ongoing, partly fueled by leaked national security information indicating the government ignored warnings about Chinese regime targeting of Mr. Chong and other MPs.

Tory MP Michael Cooper informed the committee that despite being alerted to potential security breaches in 2018, scientist Qiu Xiangguo was still allowed to send the Ebola virus to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2019.

Following an external investigation, Ms. Qiu and her husband biologist Cheng Keding were placed on paid leave in July 2019 and banned from the lab premises due to multiple security breaches.

Ms. Qiu was engaged in undisclosed research with China, listed on a patent in China for research conducted at the NML, and permitted unapproved Chinese visitors under her watch to freely roam the lab, as per a security official’s report.

Mr. Cheng was found to have connected an unauthorized external hard drive to the lab networks and allowed a visitor from China to access the networks using his personal login credentials.

The two scientists were dismissed in 2021, and their current whereabouts remain unknown as the RCMP continues its investigation.

Besides local security breaches, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service discovered that Ms. Qiu had “close and covert relationships with various” Chinese regime entities, including military scientists involved in bio-defense and bio-weapons research.

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