OTTAWA — After being kept in the dark for years, we now know why Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng were fired from Winnipeg’s National Microbiology Lab (NML), Canada’s highest security lab and the country’s only facility authorized to handle deadly viruses such as Ebola.
The former federal executive criticized for his failure to disclose records of security breaches at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg retired just weeks before cabinet tabled the long-awaited documents on Feb. 28.
Iain Stewart became the first manager to be censured by Parliament since 1891. He retired as National Research Council president after more than six years in the post.
It seems careless to let uncleared foreign researchers roam unattended in a high-security microbiology lab, as one of the scientists fired in 2020, Keding Cheng, did.
To the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, it seemed even more careless, and suspicious, that his wife and colleague, Xiangguo Qiu, hadn’t told her employers she took a side trip to the
Wuhan Institute of Virology. Or that she had applied to a “talent program” in China that the Canadian spy agency suspected was connected to commercial espionage.
In the larger sense, the whole thing was an example of carelessness, here in Canada.
There is an old saying, “It is always darkest before the dawn.” The meaning behind this axiom is that things may look dire, but they will soon turn for the better.
When it comes to the federal government and national security, however, I fear only more darkness for the foreseeable future.
We now know why Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fought so hard to keep secret the documents revealing scientists Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng, were fired from Canada’s highest security biolab because of their undisclosed relationships with agencies of the People’s Republic of China.
Facing questions about how scientists who were intentionally sharing information with China were cleared to work at a Winnipeg lab studying deadly diseases, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau deflected criticism to his chief political rival and accused the Conservative leader of weaponizing national security.
During a Thursday news conference in Thunder Bay, Ont., Trudeau was asked how scientists working on high-security viruses at the Winnipeg-based National Microbiology Lab were able to collaborate with the People’s Republic of China.
After a years-long fight for access, the federal government dumped hundreds of pages of documents about the dismissal of Dr. Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng. The two were marched out of the facility in July 2019 and were stripped of their security clearances. Their dismissals were announced in January 2021.
🇨🇦🚨🚨🚨This might be one of the biggest coverups in Canadian History by Justin Trudeau?🤔
And he is caught red handed yet again endangering Canada’sdemocracy, security and health.‼️
Now the Beijing interference in our elections makes perfect sense!☝🏻 pic.twitter.com/LVGkKOi9DP
— Contrarian (@ContrarianTribe) February 29, 2024
Two scientists fired from Canada’s National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg in 2019 had an “extensive relationship” with China that they did not properly disclose to Canadian health officials, according to documents that were finally released over four years later.
Health Minister Mark Holland announced the tabling of the documents in Parliament on Wednesday, after a special ad-hoc committee formed to review the documents recommended they be released unredacted.
Why did the government call an election in August, 2021, in the middle of a pandemic, just as Afghanistan was falling, and with more than two years left in its mandate? A good argument could be made that it was to shut down a Commons committee looking into the mysterious dismissal of two Chinese nationals from a top-secret Winnipeg research laboratory.
At the urging of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the two scientists – Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, head of vaccine development at the National Microbiology Laboratory, and her husband Keding Cheng – had their security clearance revoked and were escorted out of the facility by RCMP officers in July, 2019. They were fired in January, 2021.
A special committee of MPs tasked with evaluating censored records on the firing of two scientists from Canada’s top infectious disease laboratory – researchers who worked with China – says most of the information redacted from Public Health Agency of Canada documents appears to have been withheld to shield the organization from embarrassment rather than to protect national security.
The committee is recommending the majority of the documents be made public, according to a Feb. 19 letter, obtained by The Globe and Mail, that was sent to House leaders of the Liberals, Conservatives, NDP and Bloc Québécois.
The human-rights group Canadian Friends of Hong Kong says it won’t participate in Canada’s public inquiry into foreign interference, citing what it calls grave concerns about the standing granted to three politicians with alleged ties to the Chinese government.
In January, an organization representing Uyghur Canadians announced it was withdrawing from the public inquiry over the same matter. The refusals to participate threaten to undermine the commission’s ability to hear from all vulnerable communities facing persecution from China.
A former Chinese official who worked for a notorious religious persecution agency controlled by the Chinese communist regime resided in Vancouver at the time of his death, according to an official obituary. The agency, known as the “610 Office,” has been a key part of the persecution campaign against Falun Gong practitioners in China since 1999.
Zhang Guoqiang, originally from Zhejiang Province, had served in various Chinese military and government roles, including as the director of the provincial 610 Office, according to the obituary published on local online news outlet Zhejiang Daily. He died at the age of 70 in Vancouver on Nov. 15, 2021, reportedly succumbing to an illness after unsuccessful medical treatments.
Looks like Justin will have another guest in parliament
The whistleblower, a Canadian business school graduate, was staggered by the suspicious home loans he discovered in 2022 when he joined a mortgage approval team in a small HSBC branch on the outskirts of Toronto.
He knew of suspicions surrounding Chinese capital in British Columbia real estate, but had never witnessed shady lending while working at an HSBC branch in Campbell River, a bucolic town on the coast of Vancouver Island.
Last February, while Justin Trudeau pushed back against media investigations into Chinese election interference, citing anti-Asian racism, a brief for Trudeau’s Cabinet confirmed China’s clandestine influence in the 2019 and 2021 federal contests, and that current Members of Parliament were targeted in hostile state activity, and China leverages a “vast range of tools” to undermine “Canadian values, electoral processes, and Charter Rights.”
This definitive confirmation of Ottawa’s awareness of China’s deep attacks in recent Canadian elections comes from a newly released “Canadian Eyes Only” CSIS document called “Briefing to the Minister of Democratic Institutions on Foreign Interference.”
A series of national security leaks in the press led to the current public inquiry on foreign interference, but the leak of one CSIS report indicating Beijing was targeting MPs—a report ignored by the government—had a major role in forcing Ottawa to hold an inquiry.
That Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) assessment has now been partially disclosed by the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference.
Canada knows China tried to influence the last two federal elections, according to a top secret briefing report obtained by Global News that said the government “must do more” to fight foreign interference.
“We know that the PRC sought to clandestinely and deceptively influence the 2019 and 2021 federal elections,” according to the briefing released by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
