Conservatives launch new probe into Canada's lab leak scandal: National ... trends now
Members of Canada's House of Commons have successfully opened a new investigation into a pair of Chinese scientists who spied for Beijing while they were employed at a microbiology lab in Winnipeg.
The scientists were fired after an investigation revealed they had been sharing classified documents and materials from the Winnipeg National Microbiology Laboratory and posed a 'national security threat' to Canada.
While they worked at the lab, they maintained secret communication with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the facility at the center of the Covid lab-leak theory.
A 600-page report released in February made these revelations public. But the scientists were escorted from the lab in 2019 and fired in 2021.
Members of Parliament say they plan to find out why it took so long for the report to come out - and why it took so long for officials to act in the first place.
Chinese scientist Dr Xiangguo Qiu was booted out of a Canadian lab after she was found to have been mailing lethal viruses, including Ebola, back to China to aid research.
The Chinese couple had worked at the Canadian National Microbiology Lab (pictured) in Winnipeg, Manitoba. It is the only biosafety level 4 lab in the country cleared to handle dangerous pathogens including Ebola and Marburg virus
But Liberals and the New Democrats thwarted Conservative MPs' attempt to study its contents more closely, shutting down an emergency House of Commons ethics committee meeting on the matter at the beginning of March.
The new investigation finally became official this week, though, led by Conservative MPs on the Canada-China Relations Committee who vowed to study the revelations contained in the report.
The group was formed at the behest of Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong.
Chong said the group will focus on national security breaches, as well as the information and intelligence flows within the Canadian government that prevented these documents from becoming public sooner.
Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng, were escorted out of the lab in 2019 and fired in 2021. Reports suggest they have since resumed life in China under new names.
The only biosafety level four (BSL-4) lab in the country, Winnipeg National Microbiology Laboratory, studied dangerous viruses like Ebola.
Although the scientists were fired three years ago, the 600-page report on the incident only came out in February of this year.
'My view is that this is the start of the matter, not the end,' said Chong, who made the motion to open the new investigation, according to the National Post.
'And so really, we're leaving off where we left three years ago, when the Canada-China committee in the previous parliament asked for the Winnipeg lab documents.
'I believe strongly that the committee is the right place to examine these documents, the right place to hold the government accountable and the right place for us to hear from witnesses and to produce a report with recommendations.'
The committee reportedly plans to hear from Minister of Health Mark Holland, Minister of Public Safety Dominic LeBlanc, Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) director David Vigneault, Justin Trudeau's national security adviser Nathalie Drouin and top brass from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC).
The couple, Dr Xiangguo Qiu (left) and Dr Kending Cheng (right), are pictured above. Both are now believed to be in China
Dr Qiu has now been linked to Dr Shi Zhengli (pictured), known as 'bat woman', who is at the center of claims that the Covid-19 virus leaked from experiments she led at a Wuhan lab.
When Chong had first attempted to initiate the new probe with the ethics committee at the beginning of March, opponents argued it was not a priority nor the proper venue.
