Canada-China Relations Committee on April 29th, 2024

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

A number of things came to light through the work of this committee. One was that VFS Global, which is owned by a consortium that is partly controlled by Chinese interests, handled Chinese visa applications for Canada and continues to do so, as far as I understand. At the time, we were very surprised to see that no security checks had been done on the company. In fact, I'm surprised that the company is still handling the visas. In addition, of course, there were all the revelations around the microbiology lab in Winnipeg. That led us to request the documents we are discussing today.

When Mr. Vigneault appeared before the committee a few days ago, I referred to an article published in the Journal de Montréal in 2024. It indicated that, according to CSIS, the People's Republic of China had been conducting malicious activities in Canada since the early 2000s. When we interviewed the Minister of Health, he told us that in 2018, according to his analysis, Canada still believed that China could be a reliable, good-faith partner with whom we could co-operate on science.

CSIS told us that the People's Republic of China had been engaging in malicious activities since the early 2000s, particularly in terms of research and technology. How do you explain the discrepancy between the observations of CSIS and the rather wide-eyed attitude of the Government of Canada? Until 2018, it seems, the government considered the PRC to be a reliable and good-faith partner for scientific research.

[Nathalie Drouin]

Like Canada, none of our partners has completely cut ties with China when it comes to research. Researchers themselves would tell you that it is not healthy for innovation in Canada to completely cut ties with China in terms of research.

That doesn't mean we have to do it blindly and with just anybody, as we would, for example, with our Five Eyes partners. However, I don't think it would be to Canada's advantage to completely cut ties with China.

As you put it so well, we have to do it with our eyes open, knowing what techniques China uses in its business relationships, which CSIS has been telling us about for a number of years.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

If I understand what you are telling us, in your opinion, the message sent to us by CSIS should have been grasped more quickly and control mechanisms should have been put in place.

[Nathalie Drouin]

It's easy to say that we could have acted more quickly, but the important thing is that we are doing it now.

I would like to draw your attention to something else. I really believe in the importance of raising awareness. There can be partners or employees who started working with the Government of Canada without being recruited by China, but who were recruited later on.

I would say awareness protects these people, and helps our colleagues and partners detect the signs and symptoms of co-workers who may have been recruited.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

On that note, I imagine you're familiar with the thousand talents plan, which it seems the two scientists in question were part of. I wonder why the Wuhan lab is still not on Public Safety Canada's list of problematic research organizations that it does not recommend blindly collaborating with.

[Nathalie Drouin]

There is, in fact, a list of organizations that Canada does not have a relationship with.

For the time being, there is no agreement between the Winnipeg lab and the institute in China. That said, as I mentioned earlier, other international partners may have business relationships with the institute of virology. I can't rule out the possibility of any future dealings, depending on the case. However, we do not currently have an open agreement with that institute.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Ms. Drouin, I would like to ask you one last question in order to better understand the situation.

All of us in Parliament were surprised at how stubbornly the government objected to the idea of releasing its documents to parliamentarians.

What are the reasons for the government's stubborn resistance?

[Nathalie Drouin]

I was at the Department of Justice at the time, so I'll speak from that perspective.

The goal was not to avoid sending the documents to parliamentarians, but rather, it was to send them to the authorities who could handle that kind of information. As we can see today, the information in the documents was extremely sensitive. Until the corrective measures were taken by the lab, it was not in the interest of Canada's security to reveal the information again publicly. The goal was not to avoid sending the documents to parliamentarians, but it was to send them to the right forum, to the people who could handle them.

I understand that those discussions took place in the political rather than the administrative arena, but that was the issue.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

I would even say in the legal arena, since—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

I'm sorry, Mr. Bergeron. You are well out of time, sir.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Okay, I'll come back to that, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Drouin.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Next time.

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

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you so much to our witnesses.

Welcome, Madame Drouin. I've only dealt with you indirectly through our shared work of trying to get justice for the survivors of St. Anne's residential school. Maybe I would say that's partial work.

I will begin with our representative from CSIS.

My hair's turned grey since I came to Parliament. I remember questions being raised about intellectual property theft by China going back to my time when I was first elected and representing mining communities.

Does CSIS have a long list of research or concerns about intellectual property theft by the People's Republic of China?

[David Vigneault]

Mr. Chair, thank you for the question.

We indeed have a fairly long list of concerns regarding the PRC's attempts to steal Canada's secrets—both government secrets and, more and more, what is being developed in our cutting-edge universities and research laboratories.

As I've testified in this forum recently, we know it is a stated goal of China's government to make the People's Liberation Army the most sophisticated, capable military by 2049. One of the ways they need to do that is by stealing intellectual property from anywhere they can in the world. Canada is indeed part of that.

We saw during COVID, as well, a very sophisticated effort on the part of the PRC and other countries to try to steal, in this case, our life science research, because it was in their interest to try to understand what we were doing. If they could steal and manufacture a vaccine to gain an advantage, they would absolutely do so.

That's why we have been saying publicly at CSIS, for years now, that what makes Canada prosperous today, as well as the source of our prosperity in future years, is at risk. We need to raise our defences to protect that.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you.

In October 2017, the Chinese National Institutes for Food and Drug Control filed a patent for the inhibitor of the Ebola virus, which included one of the workers at the Winnipeg lab. However, they didn't mention her name and the patent went to China.

Was CSIS aware, at the time, that this had happened?

[David Vigneault]

Mr. Chair, you'll understand that I cannot reveal the specific nature of our intelligence.

I will perhaps take a step back from the specific question and answer Mr. Angus by saying that we, as an intelligence service, would not be aware of all patents filed in another country. That would require a capacity that no country in the world has to monitor all of this in real time.

I think it's fair to say that we understand this and adapt techniques in our investigations by studying the behaviour and tradecraft of our adversaries. This is one area that our investigators, working with our partners in the security intelligence community in Canada and around the world, are very much attuned to.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

That's fair play.

I think the worst thing is doing an after-the-fact gotcha moment, when these things are very complex and when there are all manner of things happening at the same time. However, I remember the free trade debate when Stephen Harper and the Conservatives were pushing a full free trade agreement with China. We raised serious questions about their record and issues of intellectual property theft. That got signed in 2012. In 2014, the National Research Council was forced to shut down its servers—this is our top scientific research organization—because of hacking from China. We had to shut down Treasury Board servers at one point because of hacking from China. The Bank of Canada and even Parliament Hill were targeted by China.

I'm not going to ask you for specifics, but were red flags being raised with the government? We had just signed a trade agreement with this country, and all of our key scientific, government and financial portals were being targeted by hackers. Were there investigations, hypothetically, done? Were they state actors, hypothetically?

Can you give us a broader picture so we can know how we ended up in this situation with the Winnipeg lab?

[David Vigneault]

Mr. Chair, I think it's fair to say that there were indeed a number of flags raised.

I was personally involved in response to the 2014 cyber-hack by the PRC against the NRC, and I can tell you that all the right authorities of concern in Canada and abroad were very aware of what was going on. I think it was around that period of time when people realized things were changing in the PRC under the leadership of Xi Jinping. I think we saw the beginning of a change to their approach and in terms of the aggressiveness with which they were pursuing their interests.

Those other hacks you mentioned, Mr. Angus, against the two other organizations of the federal government indeed resulted in a number of investigations flags. There's been a tremendous amount of work done by our colleagues at the Communications Security Establishment to prevent a number of these. The statistics are mind-boggling of the number of attempts against government institutions every day. More and more, what we see is that those entities, like PRC hacking groups, are going after not just government institutions but also the private sector and academia to acquire the kind of information and data they need to pursue their objectives.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you for that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Your time is up, Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Darn. I was just getting started.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

We'll get back to you. You had your six minutes.

Where does time go when you're having fun? I see Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps in behind you there. You'll remember this.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps. I see.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

As we go to our second round, I'd like to recognize Kenny Chiu in the room, who has, I'm sure, followed our proceedings with great interest, having been on the leading edge of the more public form of interference.

I recognize you, sir, and thank you for being here tonight.

Now, we'll go to our second round, and we will begin with five minutes for Mr. Cooper.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I will direct my questions to Director Vigneault.

Director Vigneault, at any point, was CSIS or law enforcement under the suspicion that Dr. Qiu and Dr. Cheng would flee Canada to the PRC?