Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I have just a couple of minutes of remarks. Then, all members can have a say on this motion, and we can get it to a vote in the time that we have.
Mr. Chair, we finally have the documents. In our view, this is the start of this matter and not the end. We are continuing where we left off three years ago, when the Canada-China committee asked for the Winnipeg lab documents.
I believe that this committee has to conduct this work. The government has indicated—Minister Holland specifically—that no one within PHAC is going to be held accountable and be terminated for these lapses at the Winnipeg lab. Therefore, I believe Parliament has a job to hold the government accountable. This is a grave and serious matter that requires a parliamentary investigation.
Dr. Qiu clandestinely collaborated with the government and the military of the People's Republic of China, and was paid by that same government and the military of the People's Republic of China without the Government of Canada knowing. These Winnipeg lab breaches are part of a broader pattern by this government of neglecting Canada's national security. We have not only the Winnipeg lab breaches but also the neglect of sensitive areas of research at Canadian universities in the theft of intellectual property and its threat to national security, which CSIS has now highlighted for almost a decade. We have the neglect of PRC's foreign interference threat activities directed at democratic institutions like Parliament and at our democratic processes like the general elections, which forced the government to call a public inquiry, which is ongoing.
In all of this, it's the Prime Minister as the head of government who's responsible. There's a PCO document titled “Open and Accountable Government”. It is one of the founding documents of this current government. In that document, it is clear that the Prime Minister alone is responsible for the machinery of government. The Prime Minister alone is responsible for how information and intelligence flow within the different entities of the Government of Canada. They flow from services like the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to various departments and agencies of the government. That same document also makes it clear that the Prime Minister has a unique responsibility for national security. When we combine those two things together, we have a responsibility as parliamentarians to get to the bottom of this because, ultimately, the Prime Minister is accountable to Parliament, as is the ministry.
The motion in front of us today is a substantive motion focused on examining two things within the mandate of the committee. First, the purpose of the motion in front of us is to examine the flow of information and intelligence within the Government of Canada. It is to examine why this information and intelligence did not catch the clandestine activities of Dr. Qiu before September 2018, when it was discovered that Dr. Qiu had improperly registered a patent in the People's Republic of China that was produced from work as a government scientist. It is to examine why Dr. Qiu had not been discovered, in the two previous years, 2017 and 2018, to have clandestinely met with entities within the People's Republic of China and to have clandestinely received payments from the government and from the military of the People's Republic of China for that travel.
The purpose of the motion, in respect of examining the flow of intelligence within the Government of Canada, is also to examine why it took 10 months for the government to secure the lab when it was discovered that a patent was improperly registered in the PRC and that government policy was violated. The patent violation was discovered in September 2018, yet it took 10 months, until July 5, 2019, for the government to secure the lab.
Despite the fact that in the early part of 2019, Dr. Qiu's computer was seized by government IT and despite the fact that Dr. Qiu, in the early part of 2019, was denied approval for a trip to the PRC, she was still allowed to ship lethal Ebola virus and henipavirus on March 31, 2019, from the Winnipeg National Microbiology Laboratory to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. We need to understand why information didn't flow more quickly to prevent that from happening.
The second substantive examination that the motion proposes is to examine why the documents originally requested in 2021 were overclassified. Minister Holland has indicated in the House of Commons that the classification of the documents was PHAC's responsibility alone. We need to understand why officials at the Public Health Agency of Canada incorrectly classified these documents and denied a parliamentary committee this information.
That's why, Mr. Chair, all of the witnesses, with the exception of three witnesses, are from PHAC. That is why we're asking for the departmental security officer to appear. It was that position that originally flagged the violation of government policy and the registration of a patent in the People's Republic of China. That is why we are calling other officials from PHAC—to understand what broke down in the transmission of information that a parliamentary committee had ordered four times to Parliament and its committees.
I'll finish, Mr. Chair, by saying this. I really truly believe we have a job to do as parliamentarians, in this committee, to hold the government accountable. The government defied four orders of the House of Commons and its committee for these documents. We called the president of the Public Health Agency in front of Canada in front of Canada to condemn him for the defiance of this order and for refusing to hand over the documents. The government, subsequently, took the Speaker of the House of Commons to court and, subsequently, called an early election, which had the effect of dissolving the four orders.
After three long years, we finally have access to the documents. We need to continue this examination in order to hold the government accountable. We cannot let the defiance of Parliament that took place three years ago to go unanswered and unexamined. We cannot allow these national security breaches to continue.
That's why it's so important, I think, that this committee adopts this motion, examines this matter and, I hope, produces a report with recommendations to improve the government's performance in these matters.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.