Betrayal of National Security

The Winnipeg-based National Microbiology Lab is the only Level 4 lab in Canada, enabling its scientists to work with highly dangerous microbes. (John Woods/The Canadian Press)

"The fact that we're a net consumer of intelligence means we need to be extremely careful in how we handle this material."

"There seems to be no reflection on any of these issues whatsoever in this demand for information."

Stephanie Carvin, professor, Carleton University Norman Paterson School of International Affairs

"The research culture seems to have taken priority over the national security culture."

"There's only so many of these labs [level-4 security laboratories equipped to handle deadly pathogens] around in t he Western world, let alone among the Five Eyes."

"So if you're going to try to infiltrate one, you're going to try to pick the weakest link. And so once again, it turns out, that Canada was the weakest link."

"China has a very active, very aggressive and extremely dangerous bioweapons program,. So all the research that's being generated here could easily be reappropriated by the Chinese authorities to advance rather nefarious causes."  
"This would also explain why you haven't charged them, because once you charge them, then eventually you have to put people on trial. And when you put people on trial, then you have to disclose the evidence that you have. So the government might quite intentionally be trying to keep this sort of relatively below the radar as much as it can."   

"This needs to be a wake-up call for Canada about how aggressive the Chinese have become at infiltrating Western institutions for their political, economic and national security benefits." 

Christian Leuprecht, professor, Royal Military College of Canada and Queen's University

When asked about the case during a daily briefing in Beijing, Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said: 'China and Canada have some scientific co-operation, which is quite normal and should not be politicized.' (Mark Schiefelbein/The Associated Press)

 

In the Canadian House of Commons a battle royale is taking place against the federal government's complacency over permitting arms of the Chinese Communist Party access to some of Canada's most shielded technical, scientific, military, political, industrial secrets. Opposition parties in Parliament are insistent that the reason why two top-flight scientists were dismissed from their work in the nation's high security infectious disease laboratory be disclosed to them. 

A vote on Thursday to declare the Public Health Agency of Canada in contempt of Parliament was passed. It had declined to provide top-secret details relating to the two Chinese scientists being ushered out of the laboratory along with a handful of Chinese bioscience students, without explanation. A parliamentary deadlock has ensued; the Liberal government refusing to hand over documents related to the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg's collaboration with Chinese military researchers.

The two scientists -- Dr.Xiangguo Qin and her husband, Keding Cheng, were fired in January for undisclosed reasons even while an RCMP investigation is underway. Tabling such sensitive information would result in a breach of national security and might interfere with an ongoing police investigation, responds the Public Health Agency of Canada under whose aegis the laboratory operates.

 

Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, a prominent virologist at the forefront of an ongoing RCMP investigation, is seen in an undated screengrab at the Winnipeg-based National Microbiology Laboratory. She was fired from her post in January, but officials won't say why. (CBC)

 

Experts for the most part share agreement that the Winnipeg high-security laboratory breach represents proof=positive of an overly relaxed attitude in Canadian government circles and academia with respect to actions by Beijing to secure foreign intellectual property in the region of biological or technological research. China is well known to infiltrate foreign powers using a wide range of avenues, among them its Thousands Talents Program, where leading scientists of Chinese origin and engineers working overseas are reminded of their obligations to China.

Security authorities in the United States arrested a number of researchers with connection to the Thousand Talents under the charge the program's ultimate goal is to take possession of sensitive intellectual property, then made use of by the Chinese government and its military. No fewer than seven scientists at the Winnipeg facility have conducted experiments and co-authored studies on infectious diseases in coordination with Chinese military researchers.

 

Qiu, a medical doctor from Tianjin, China, came to Canada in 1996 for graduate studies. (CBC)

 

Chinese scientist Fethu Yan from the Academy of Military Medical Sciences of the People's Liberation Army operated out of the Winnipeg laboratory for a time, occasionally listed as an affiliate of the facility. Countless research agreements have been signed by Canadian academics with Chinese researchers, accompanied most frequently with sizable funding arrangements. If there's one thing scientists working on projects respond to, it is operations funding.

 

The Winnipeg laboratory transferred Ebola and Henipah viruses to China's Wuhan Institute of Virology, under the direction of then-chief scientist at the lab, Dr.Xiangguo Qin; a transfer held to have been unauthorized. Several months later, the two scientists were ushered out of the Winnipeg laboratory by Canadian authorities. Mystery upon mystery, lacking explanation on the basis of their release's potential betrayal of national security. 

"Why did our security procedures not identify that this was not a good idea, that these individuals, given their background, should not be given security clearances?"   

"No news is good news, is how we often refer to it." 

"There are important security issues — and not just for us, but for all the other countries that we partner with as well — because if there's information that's going from us to a hostile foreign state, that is something that has significant ramifications."

Scott Newark, former Alberta crown prosecutor, executive officer, Canadian Police Association, policy adviser to the Ontario and federal governments

CBC News previously received hundreds of pages of documents through an access-to-information request, detailing a shipment of Ebola and Henipah viruses sent from the Winnipeg lab to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. (Karen Pauls/CBC News)