Trove of Winnipeg lab firing documents will face committee study

MPs sitting on a special House of Commons committee will study the trove of documents released last month detailing allegations against two scientists fired from a high-security lab in Winnipeg.

Members of the special committee on the Canada–People’s Republic of China relationship met Tuesday at the request of Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong.

Chong has been seeking a committee probe the matter, and earlier this month failed to get the House ethics committee to look into it.

“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,” Chong said on Tuesday.

“These serious national security breaches, I believe, warrant examination by a parliamentary committee.”

Released last month, more than 600 pages of documents 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 “relating to possible breaches in security protocols,” public health officials said at the time.

They were subsequently fired in January 2021.

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

Cheng was accused of violating safety and security policies by inviting restricted visitors into the lab unaccompanied, who then allegedly removed materials from the lab.

Investigators also found that Cheng received packages of biological samples from China that were mislabelled as “kitchen utensils,” which the investigation concluded was done to ease the shipping process but not with