Canada-China Relations Committee on April 8th, 2024

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

Sure. Go ahead.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Just to go back to the question, have you reviewed or have you met with CSIS to review the existing personnel in the agency to see whether the security clearances are in fact appropriate?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

I am not responsible for that. I think the Public Health Agency—

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

You haven't met with them on it.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

I would not meet with CSIS.

In terms of the security reviews of employees, I would turn to the officials on that—to Madam Jeffrey, if I could. That would be on her side of the fence.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Go ahead, Ms. Jeffrey.

[Heather Jeffrey]

In the first instance, this situation came to light in these cases as a result of a security awareness briefing provided by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in regard to the threats against Canadian research and the potential vulnerability of Canadian scientists to pressure. That awareness-raising continues in regular meetings with our security services and ongoing reviews. I would note that the RCMP investigation into these cases remains ongoing, as they have said publicly.

Those contacts have been regularized and are constant and ongoing, as is appropriate given the nature of the ongoing evolving risk situation.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you for that.

To get to the crux of the issue, I think it's important that PHAC and other agencies within the government have security processes for really important information like this. It is a bit concerning to know that CSIS was the only agency that identified this information vulnerability prior to PHAC. I believe that Canadians expect, in an agency that has an immense amount of information on individuals, particularly personal information, that there be some kind of security oversight internal to the ministry.

I think this could have been largely prevented by way of the recent changes that you've discussed publicly, Minister. Those changes could have been made much sooner, I believe, which could have reduced some of the risk that's present to this case.

In one quick answer, if you could do this whole thing again, would you have released the documents sooner?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

No, because the process by which we released the documents was incredibly important.

Maybe I can rest on this moment for a second. National security is not the only issue present here. There's also consideration for protecting employee privacy, and if you're going to waive that.... The people who serve in the public service have that right—as in any job, by the way. I was head of Heart and Stroke. We let people go. Sometimes it was painful, because they would have a story of why they were let go that was completely inaccurate, but I wasn't allowed to comment. The reason I'm not allowed to comment is that employee confidentiality is extremely important. To waive that is a big deal. When we waive it, I think we have to think through these issues.

What I liked about this process was that a weakness was identified in NSICOP—challenging redactions. We were able to create a process in the ad hoc committee that allowed those, through an independent arbiter, to be released with maximum transparency while protecting the partnerships we have with our Five Eyes partners to make sure that employee information and national security are protected.

What I think is worth doing—

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Do you think that has impacted, however, our credibility to our allies at NATO and to the Five Eyes, for example?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

I think the fact that we were so cautious in dealing with this issue and that we worked through a way of ensuring both transparency and public interest and making sure that we still maintained our commitments to protect our processes—

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

I don't know if we did that, though, because it was an information breach.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

There are two different questions.

Maybe I misunderstood your question. I apologize. I thought your question was on how we handled the release of the documents—

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

That was the first question. The second question was related to the impacts on our allies.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

Right. On the second question—and I think this bears thinking about—these employees were long-term employees, from 2003 and 2006, published—

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

I think that's why it's concerning, though, Minister.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

It is for me too. These are Canadian citizens, eminent scientists.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Has it impacted our allies to know that we—

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

Yes, it has and it has in this way.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Yes, I think—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Gentlemen, I need to intervene because Mr. Desjarlais' time has expired.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

It's time to go to Mr. Chong for five minutes.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Was the identification of two patents registered in China the first red flag that went up about Dr. Qiu?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

That's correct.