Emboldened by fellow Conservative MPs, Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole refuses to appoint members to Justin Trudeau’s special committee on Canada-China relations until the Winnipeg Biolab leak documents are released.
On December 17, O’Toole penned a letter to the PM, demanding the unredacted release of documents related to the firing of two Chinese scientists from Canada’s only level-4 biolab, which handles the deadliest viruses known to man, and which many believe had data leaked directly to the infamous Wuhan Lab.
In the letter, O’Toole claimed the committee had become an extension of the Prime Minister’s Office and was being used “to avoid accountability and that it is diminishing its credibility.”
“Until the requested documents are deposited with the law clerk, as previously ordered, and until you agree to a nonpartisan effort to make statutory change to NSICOP’s governing legislation, Conservatives will not participate in NSICOP,” O’Toole wrote.
The case of the Winnipeg Biolab Leak began in July 2019, when two Chinese scientists working at the National Microbiology Laboratory were suddenly and without explanation thrown out of the laboratory and stripped of their security clearance. They were formally fired in January 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic took off.
It was later revealed that scientists Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng, may have leaked data to the Chinese Communist Party— specifically to the infamous Wuhan virology lab — as part of a long-term espionage mission in Canada’s only Level 4 laboratory.
“It appears that what you might well call Chinese agents infiltrated one of the highest prized national security elements when it comes to biosecurity and biodefence,” Christian Leuprecht, a security expert and professor at the Royal Military College and Queen’s University, stated in June.
Leuprecht believes that the RCMP has not charged the scientists because the government may be covering for more significant security issues, including allies’ roles in the overall investigation; though, both scientists are still under investigation as far as we know.
“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,” he said.
Following the two scientists’ firings, the Trudeau government refused to comply with House of Commons orders to produce unredacted documents related to firing the two Winnipeg lab scientists for the special Commons committee on Canada-China relations review. This, O’Toole is saying, is evidence that the committee is now entirely under the control of the Prime Minister.
Opposition leaders subsequently fought this decision, but just when some ground was being made, Trudeau called a snap election, dissolving both government and, effectively, the order to produce the documents.
Since then, there has been little news regarding the lab leak, but this new pushback from O’Toole indicates that it remains relevant to MPs even if no headway is being made.
