Canada-China Relations Committee on April 8th, 2024

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

Mr. Chair, if I could be afforded.... I think it's a key point.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

—it took another three and a half months—until July 5, 2019—before the two scientists were finally marched out of the Winnipeg lab, scientists who in March had been identified as working with the People's Liberation Army.

This is Canada's highest security lab. Is that really an instance of PHAC acting in the highest order, as you said?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

Let me say that—

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Is that Mark Holland's definition of PHAC acting in the highest order?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Mr. Cooper, you are over time, but I will give the minister an opportunity to respond.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

Due process is incredibly important. These individuals worked with the Public Health Agency. One was hired in 2003 and one was hired in 2006. They were published and renowned across North America for their work in vaccines, virology and therapy. They were seen as leaders in helping to save lives.

If you are making an accusation against somebody, these people's careers can be, rightly, destroyed. Before you destroy somebody's career, they are entitled to due process. Due process is important in this country.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Minister, are you saying that they are eminent scientists or eminent spies?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Mr. Cooper, I'm sorry, but your time has expired.

When we speak over each other, it makes it very difficult for our interpreters to do their jobs.

We will now go to Mr. Naqvi for six minutes or less.

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Minister, welcome to this committee.

I want to pick up the conversation where Mr. Cooper left it because I think he's throwing out quite a few dates and perhaps muddling the facts.

Canada, I'm assuming, has had a long-term relationship in working with China and other countries when it comes to finding a cure for deadly pathogens, as you put it, and other matters. Can you walk us through the kinds of relationships, arrangements and agreements that Canada, through the Public Health Agency of Canada, goes through and develops with other countries like China?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

The collaborations we engage in internationally are critically important to protecting our population and to protecting human beings all across the world. As I mentioned, pathogens don't know international boundaries, and they certainly aren't interested in politics, so the ability to share best practices, science and the latest evidence of what actions we can take, be they in therapies or vaccines, is critically important. Where new information arises, we want those partnerships.

I think it's deeply tragic, frankly, that the relationship with China deteriorated such that we can't collaborate on these issues any longer. It is unfathomable that a country would place its interests as a nation ahead of the interests of the health of our species.

That's what we encountered here. We're at a very different place now than we were five years ago, and that's deeply tragic. However, that is separate and apart—and I think we have to be very careful because there is an attempt to conflate these things—from the actions of Canadian citizens who lied. They were in their jobs and completely misrepresented themselves to the Public Health Agency. That's reprehensible.

They were rightly fired. They're rightly subject to investigation. It is certainly a very serious matter, but we have to be careful, I think, in the characterization of that to not conflate things.

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Obviously, what happened in 2018 and 2019 with these two particular scientists is that they essentially lied to their employer, the national microbiology laboratory.

Can you walk us through what steps have been taken by the national microbiology laboratory to ensure that safety and security are enhanced and that nothing like what happened in 2018 and 2019 can happen again?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

Look, anytime somebody misrepresents themself and engages in behaviour of this nature, you learn. Certainly, the threat environment for Canada has changed over the last five years. There have been very critical actions, and I can go into more detail. I know we don't have a lot of time.

With respect to physical security, facility access, employee communication, engagement technology, partnership and research affiliations, and governance oversight, it's a process of continual improvement. When it comes to national safety, unfortunately we don't always—or even most often, in fact—share the same values as some of our adversaries. They're willing to go places and do things that are unimaginable to us. I think it would have been unimaginable that a country like China was potentially willing, in this instance, to use pathogens that threaten humanity in order to advance their geopolitical agenda. That's no longer unimaginable, so it changes how you respond.

Looking at how employees communicate.... Even incredibly eminent, well-published scientists who are Canadian citizens recognize that we have to dig more and ask more questions. In the past, that would have been deeply insulting to scientists. Now, in light of this, scientists understand that they can't be taken at their word and that we have to question other relationships they have and probe into their lives in a way that would have seemed entirely inappropriate and crazy before.

That's the advantage of hindsight when somebody does something unthinkable. It changes your framing and disposition. Then we as a society have to accept something that's more invasive. That's certainly true for scientists today.

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you.

How much time do I have left, Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

You have one minute.

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Perhaps in a minute I can ask the officials to outline what kind of process both the Public Health Agency of Canada and the national microbiology laboratory went through to enhance their safety and security protocols after 2018 and 2019.

[Heather Jeffrey, President, Public Health Agency of Canada]

I can respond to that question.

In addition to enhanced physical security and access control measures, all policies at the national microbiology laboratory and the agency were revised. These are secret-level facilities requiring clearances under the Human Pathogens and Toxins Act. There is continual training and review of our guard services, as well as our personnel. We have strengthened protocols for deliveries in shipping and receiving, including mandatory controls around documentation and verification of infectious materials. There are requirements for material transfer agreements and collaborative research agreements, and enforcement of their use.

Comprehensive threat and risk assessments for the physical and IT environments have been undertaken to ensure that all of our security measures are complete and up to date. In addition, we have updated our policy on affiliations and collaborations with academic, research and health care organizations, and we have a new student hiring policy with additional controls.

These are designed to respond to the threat environment we face.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Thank you, Ms. Jeffrey.

We have finished with Mr. Naqvi's time.

We will now go to Mr. Bergeron for six minutes.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Minister, for being here.

Listening to your answers to Mr. Cooper's questions, I found it very naive when you said that, at the time, you still believed that the Chinese authorities considered deadly viruses like Ebola to be at par with how important you consider protecting humanity to be.

I find these comments all the more naive given that, in an article posted on the Radio-Canada website on February 29, you said that China's influence on the Canadian scientific community “was not as widely known as it is today”.

However, in an article published in Le Journal de Montréal on January 29, 2024, we learned that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS, released a report in 2010 explaining China's growing economic power, its growing confidence and its aggressive new agent recruitment policy, which suggest that it has the will and resources to enhance its intelligence activities more and more.

In short, for over 20 years, CSIS has been alerting government authorities to the fact that the People's Republic of China is being much more aggressive and is intensifying its intelligence activities, particularly in terms of technological research and biomedical advances.

Therefore, why claim that China's influence was not as widely known as it is today?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

First, I must say that the issue of public safety is extremely complex, because it has many dimensions. In the case of a virus that threatens the population in general, we first expect the government to do everything it can to protect the public, including cooperating to find solutions. We expect that if a solution exists elsewhere in the world, the government will take action. First of all, we try to work with all scientific communities around the world to find a solution. This is really important, because if a tragic event were to occur, other types of questions would be asked. People would ask the government what it's done to protect the public and whether it has sought a solution. So it's important to cooperate as much as possible.

However, the world has changed a great deal over the past five years. Five years ago, we certainly had a problem with China. That was absolutely the case. However, for me, it's terrible to think that a country could play with a virus for geopolitical reasons. To me, that's something else. As Minister of Health, I have a lot of objectives on my mind at the same time, because many threats are still present. I'm very concerned about that.

So we have to cooperate with all countries as much as possible. It's therefore extremely unfortunate that we can now no longer work with a country as big as China. China has a lot of incredible scientists; they have enormous potential to find solutions for their country, for our country and for people in general. It's very sad that our interaction with a country like that is coming to an end. That has major implications, not only for Canada, but for the world.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

It must be recognized that it's a laudable objective to want to work with all countries to prevent the spread of viruses that can be catastrophic for humanity. However, given that CSIS has been warning the Canadian government for over 20 years that the People's Republic of China's scientific espionage is a problem. Don't you think we were a bit reckless to continue sharing our secrets or scientific information with scientists who were then passing it on to the Chinese authorities?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

You're right, when we share information, there is a risk that a country could use it to gain an economic advantage. However, that carries far less risk than threats to our public safety and national security. Five years ago, China or scientists in China might have used the information for an economic advantage. However, the consequences of that are not really serious compared to using a virus as a weapon or as a threat to the global population, which is a completely different ball game. As I already explained, I find it extremely unfortunate that it's now impossible to cooperate with a billion people on viruses.

So, they are two very different things.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Thank you, Minister.

We'll now go to Mr. Desjarlais for six minutes.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the minister for being present for a very important piece of work. It concerns something that I think most Canadians are concerned about—the safety and security of not only our country but also our information. In an age of digital technology, when both companies and countries are participating in the exchange of information and the withholding of information, it could be, to put it in terms of bad actors, a battlefield. In this particular instance, I think Canadians are concerned that should we find ourselves in an “informational battlefield”, we would be disadvantaged by the reality of the knowledge being seen in this very troubling case.

Minister, I think you alluded to the fact that it's important for there to be accountability. The two individuals who did this are no longer there, of course, but what isn't known is how co-operative other officials could have been, or other persons or personnel. What information have you or your ministry reviewed, maybe in coordination with CSIS, on the safety and security of other persons in PHAC, particularly in its work on information, science and technology?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

I hope everybody gets an opportunity to visit the national microbiology laboratory and meet the scientists there, who are on the front lines of looking at potential nightmare scenarios. COVID was bad, but it could have been much worse. In so many instances, we were very lucky as a population that we didn't have a pathogen with a much higher mortality rate.

That remains a risk for our population at any given time. We charge the Public Health Agency and the national microbiology laboratory with finding solutions to nightmare scenarios and co-operating with and listening to scientists and engage wherever possible, because if God forbid anything ever happens, people will ask, “What did you do to find an answer?”

As I said, when you take one billion people off the planet and can no longer co-operate with hundreds of thousands of scientists who themselves are leading in the area of virology and finding solutions, that is a terribly tragic day for humanity. When I look at it, and I would encourage you to look at it too, the threats that the Public Health Agency is trying to navigate.... Think about this. These were employees engaged in—

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

I'm sorry, Minister. It's just that the time is really short.