Ottawa releases documents on fired Winnipeg lab scientists after 4 years

After four years, the federal government is now releasing documents related to the high-profile firing of two scientists from Canada’s National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg in 2019.

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.

He later told reporters that the documents show an “unacceptable” security situation in the lab.

“The threat environment with respect to foreign interference was in a very different place at that moment” in 2019, Holland said.

“While there were the proper protocols in place, there was a lax adherence to the security protocols in place.”

The documents are expected to detail allegations against scientists Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng, who were escorted from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg in July 2019 for reasons public health officials described as “relating to possible breaches in security protocols.”

The couple were subsequently fired in January 2021.

Holland said Wednesday the documents show no evidence that Qiu and Cheng violated national security laws by sharing confidential information with China. Rather, he said the “eminent” scientists did not adequately disclose their work with scientists associated with the Chinese government to the Public Health Agency of Canada.

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The Winnipeg lab is Canada’s only Level 4 laboratory, designed to deal safely with deadly contagious germs such as the Ebola virus.

At the time the scientists were fired, amid calls from opposition MPs to release unredacted documents related to the issue, then-PHAC president Iain Stewart argued that he was prevented by law from releasing material that could violate privacy or national security laws.

The refusal to hand over documents led the House of Commons to issue its first formal rebuke of a non-MP in nearly 110 years. That came after MPs voted to invoke a rare set of powers to discipline or potentially even imprison people.

Clad in a dark suit, Stewart was brought in by the sergeant-at-arms to stand at the bar of the House of Commons — literally a long brass bar across the green carpet — where he was reprimanded in a rare move.

After the House of Commons ordered PHAC to produce records on the matter, the Liberals applied to the Federal Court of Canada in June 2021 to quash that before dropping that request in August 2021.

Such a request would have required the Federal Court to rule on longstanding parliamentary precedent that the House of Commons is supreme and has unfettered power to demand the production of any documents it sees fit, no matter how sensitive and regardless of privacy or national security laws.

A year later, Holland, who at the time was the government House leader, announced the creation of the ad-hoc committee of MPs from all parties to review the unredacted documents and determine if they could be released to the public.

The committee concluded a majority of the documents should be released unredacted, particularly material related to PHAC, the members wrote in a letter the House leaders of the Liberals, Conservatives, NDP and Bloc Quebecois that was also released Wednesday.

“The information appears to be mostly about protecting the organization from embarrassment for failures in policy and implementation, not legitimate national security concerns, and its release is essential to hold the Government to account,” the members wrote.

More to come…

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