Smoke lifted, scientists fired, but no fire
Or, the Coles Notes version of the security scandal at the National Microbiology Lab
The big national-security related story of the past week concerned long-awaited revelations about what exactly had been going on at the Winnipeg National Microbiology lab (NML), which resulted in the firing of two Chinese-born Canadian scientists, Drs. Qiu and Cheng, one (Dr. Qiu) very eminent for her work on an antibody treatment for the Ebola virus. The burnt scent of espionage long hung in the air.
I am going to explore the backstory—the long and winding road to the release of 623 pages of records this past week, and offer my own views on the significance of it all. But as that will be a lengthy report I thought it might be helpful to offer conclusions or takeaways up front.
I still hope you will read the longer report to come and that this version will whet some appetites.
Key takeways:
1. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service, through the conduct of two security assessments in the spring and summer of 2020, threw the book at Drs. Qiu and Cheng in the midst of rising tensions with China, especially in the context of the detention of the ‘two Michaels’
2. CSIS found that both scientists at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg presented a future security risk. This security assessment was based primarily on concerns about how the pair might act in the future given past breaches of security protocols on the part of Dr. Cheng and Dr. Qiu’s pattern of engagements with Chinese entities and talent programs.
3. There was no ‘smoking gun’ evidence of the conduct of espionage by either Dr. Qiu or Dr. Cheng on behalf of China
4. There was no connection between the role of Dr. Qiu in shipping samples of Ebola viruses to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in March 2019 and the security assessment concerns.
5. The Public Health Agency of Canada, on the basis of the CSIS security assessment and other internal reviews, first suspended the security clearances of Drs. Cheng and Qiu and ultimately revoked them, which led to their employment termination on January 20,2021
6. The records of the NML case reveal a very poor security culture at the NML. This is the real story.
7. Throughout the public course of the security breach controversy, Parliament acted in a hyper-partisan way
8. The Government failed to provide adequate transparency about the NML security breach story, which only fueled hyper-partisanship
9. The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians became road kill in the course of Parliamentary debate over the NML. Then Public Health Minister Patty Hadju had attempted to defuse the crisis by referring the matter for study to the NSICOP in 2021, but it was not trusted by opposition politicians to do the job.
10. After a lot of silly buggers’ battles between Parliament and the Government, including a demand from the Speaker of the House that the Government deliver all records (classified or otherwise) to Parliament and a corresponding law suit by the Government against the Speaker, a solution to the impasse was found.
11. The solution was dreamed up by then-Government leader in the House, Mark Holland, who proposed the creation of an ad hoc committee of Parliamentarians who would, after swearing an oath of secrecy, have access to all the relevant records. A final say on what records could be made public was left to a panel of three judges. [Full disclosure, I was consulted at the time by Mr. Holland’s office about the scheme]
12. The ad hoc committee worked successfully and this led to the public release of an only lightly redacted collection of 623 pages of records.
13. The ad-hoc committee came to the conclusion that the Government had tried to keep records secret largely out of embarrassment rather than to protect legitimate national security confidentiality or privacy.
14. A Parliamentary committee motion to continue the study of security breaches at the NML was defeated by the Liberals and NDP.
15. The Minister of Health, (now) Mark Holland, claims that the security problems at the NML have been fixed since 2019, but offers no proof of this.
16. The Prime Minister has asked his new National Security and Intelligence Adviser, Natalie Drouin, to look further into the matter.
17. That’s it, folks
This current federal government lacks transparency.
An important finding was the discovery of Dr. Qui's Chinese version of her CV that she kept secret from Canada that featured her numerous connections to Chinese military labs and other Chinese institutions. She also advised the Chinese in setting up their own Level 4 facilities. Then there was the revelation of patent(s) taken by the Chinese related to her government lab work, which first blew the story open.