Key takeaways from newly released Winnipeg lab documents

While Canada’s intelligence service decided two scientists working at a high-security Winnipeg virology lab in 2019 were a likely threat to national security, their alleged actions do not appear to have been guided by foreign agents.

More than 600 pages of former secret documents, released by the Liberal government Wednesday afternoon, detail the nearly two years of investigation that led the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) to recommend that Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng, lose their security clearances.

Qiu and Cheng, worked at Winnipeg’s National Microbiology Laboratory until July 2019, when they were escorted from the premises over what officials described as possible security breaches. They were fired in January 2021.

Subsequent investigations, including by CSIS and the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), determined that Qiu hid her relationships with Chinese research associations and shipped some materials from the Winnipeg lab without authorization.

While many details of Qiu and Cheng’s case were reported through leaks to media, the case became a lightning rod for scrutiny during the COVID-19 pandemic, and as federal Liberals fought for years to keep the documents secret.

The documents range from mundane email chains to “Canadian Eyes Only” security assessments, largely uncensored and released in a batch by Ottawa on Wednesday.

But they offer a glimpse into the investigations that ultimately led to the two scientists’ dismissal.

Some of the most revealing information comes from two sets of CSIS interviews with Qiu and Cheng.

The first CSIS interviews were conducted in March 2020, prompted by an internal PHAC investigation into whether Qiu improperly sent Canadian intellectual property,