Tories Launch New Attempt to Study Winnipeg Lab Docs in Committee After Block by Liberals, NDP

Conservative MP Michael Chong prepares to appear as a witness at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs regarding foreign election interference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on May 16, 2023. The Canadian Press/Spencer Colby

Conservatives will attempt to start a study on the Winnipeg laboratory documents and their implications for national security after being blocked in committee by Liberal and NDP MPs.

Tory MP Michael Chong said he will table a motion to this effect at a special meeting of the House of Commons Canada-China relations committee on March 26.

Mr. Chong said in a post on the X platform it took three years for MPs to be able to read the Winnipeg lab documents and there’s been no dedicated committee hearings since their release three weeks ago.

“That’s why I’m triggering a meeting of the CDN-PRC committee next week Tuesday to get this motion adopted,” said the MP, who serves as his party’s foreign affairs critic.

The Liberal government resisted multiple House orders and took the House speaker to court to avoid disclosing the documents about security breaches and Chinese penetration of the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg.

Over 600 pages of documents were finally tabled in late February after a group of MPs from each party and a panel of arbiters determined there were no major national security concerns in releasing the documents.

The records shed light on the firing of scientists Qiu Xiangguo and Keding Cheng at the lab in 2021. Both were involved in multiple local security breaches and had extensive and undisclosed ties and work arrangements with Chinese state entities. A Chinese general saw the Winnipeg lab as a “base” to fulfill China’s objectives, says one released document from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).

Mr. Chong had attempted to get a motion adopted to study the documents in a March 4 meeting of the ethics committee, but Liberal MP Iqra Khalid called to end debate on the matter as quickly as possible. Liberals on committee received support from NDP MP Matthew Green to end the proceedings.

Ms. Khalid accused Conservatives of playing politics with the matter. She said the special meeting called to debate Mr. Chong’s motion was “not urgent” and that studying the documents falls outside the mandate of the committee.

Mr. Chong’s motion for the Canada-China committee calls to hear from a number of witnesses from the main government entities involved in the controversy, such as the laboratory, its parent agency the Public Health Agency of Canada, and CSIS.

The motion also invites Health Minister Mark Holland and Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc to appear before committee. Neither were in their current role when the main events surrounding the lab affair took place.

Mr. Holland has called the breaches at the laboratory “unacceptable” after the documents were released, while also downplaying their impacts. He told reporters on Feb. 28 that “no sensitive information left the lab.”

Meanwhile CSIS, in its security assessment of Qiu Xiangguo, wrote that she “developed deep, cooperative relationships with a variety” of Chinese state entities and “intentionally transferred scientific knowledge and materials to China in order to benefit” Beijing.