Thank you, Mr. Chair, for recognizing the importance of following the order.
As I mentioned in my brief remarks, I am speaking today in support of the motion by my fellow member Michael Chong regarding the importance for this committee to undertake a study on the documents related to the Winnipeg lab affair, which were made public four weeks ago. As my colleague said, the tabling of the documents or the fact that we have them in our hands does not signal the end of this matter, but only the beginning. In the last Parliament, we worked very hard to obtain the documents so we could refer to them to ask those responsible about what really happened in this situation, which led to the expulsion of two researchers from the level‑4 lab in Winnipeg, Canada's highest-security lab.
It is all the more important for us to shed light on this because we learned today in the newspapers that a new level‑4 laboratory may be coming into operation shortly in Canada. To prevent what happened at the Winnipeg lab from happening again in the new facility, we must get to the bottom of these events, which led the government to disregard four parliamentary orders to produce the documents. The Prime Minister took the House of Commons to court, something that has never before happened in Canadian history. He even went so far as to call an election to avoid responding to the order from Parliament to produce the documents.
Here we are several years later with the documents in question. It is important, as my colleague's motion states, that we be able to study what is in the documents, ask questions about why it took so long to get them and find out what in them may have compromised national security.
The motion seeks to have “the committee undertake a study of the matters revealed in the Winnipeg lab documents together with the broader concerns they represent in relation to Canada's national security, as well as the obstacles encountered in obtaining these documents”. I won't read the entire motion, but I would just like to mention that there are two categories of witnesses we want to invite.
First, there are witnesses who would be invited to appear here to answer the committee's questions and who would be summoned to appear if they did not accept the invitation. They are the departmental security officer and executive director of security at the Public Health Agency of Canada; the deputy minister of health, Dr. Stephen Lucas; the vice-president of the infectious diseases branch of the Public Health Agency of Canada, Dr. Donald Sheppard; the vice-president of the national microbiology laboratory branch of the Public Health Agency of Canada, Dr. Guillaume Poliquin; the president of the Public Health Agency of Canada, Heather Jeffrey; the director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, David Vigneault; and the deputy clerk of the Privy Council and national security and intelligence adviser to the Prime Minister, Nathalie G. Drouin.
The witnesses in the other category would be invited to appear on dates to be set by you. They are the Minister of Health, the Honourable Mark Holland; the Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs, the Honourable Dominic LeBlanc; and other witnesses whose names come up in the discussions and revelations that emerge during the study. I will talk later about why we absolutely must hear from Mr. Holland. Finally, the motion calls for the committee to report its findings to the House.
I'm going to go through the first couple of questions, just to put the debate in context for people. After the first red flag was raised in September 2018, when a patent was filed in China by one of the two researchers in question, Dr. Qiu, it took 10 months to secure the Winnipeg laboratory. From September 2018 to July 2019, these two researchers remained in the lab, even though the agency was aware of the situation. We need to know why—