Debates of June 1st, 2021

Opposition Motion—Documents Related to the Transfer of Ebola and Henipah Viruses to the Wuhan Institute of Virology

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Madam Speaker, today's debate is a very important one. Some might argue that this is simply a partisan attempt to embarrass the government. However, aside from the very important national security issues, what is at issue today is the pre-eminence of Parliament, the fact that it takes precedence over any laws a government might invoke to avoid being held accountable to parliamentarians. I will come back to this point later.

My colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot already said that the Bloc Québécois would vote in favour of this motion, moved by my colleague from Wellington—Halton Hills. We will vote for this motion because it is nearly identical to a motion that was unanimously passed by the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations. I said "unanimously", because the Liberal members supported it. This motion was adopted in response to the Public Health Agency of Canada's intransigent, stubborn and bullheaded refusal to provide the documents parliamentarians were requesting. Even our Liberal colleagues were frustrated by the tightlipped, stubborn attitude of PHAC representatives, so much so that they voted in favour of this motion, which was the subject of a recent report from the special committee.

I will touch briefly on this point, but I wonder why the Conservatives are using an opposition day to present a motion that is virtually identical to a motion that the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations reported on to the House and that could have been called for debate before being adopted.

Why are the Conservatives moving this motion this morning? The Liberal Party’s claim that the Conservatives are simply trying to embarrass the government may have some truth to it. However, beyond this strictly partisan aspect, which, I think, deserves to be mentioned, there is the fundamental issue I raised earlier: Parliament’s pre-eminence, the fact that it takes precedence over any laws the government might invoke to avoid complying with a request from a parliamentary committee.

Let us start at the beginning. We created the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations to look into the deterioration of relations between Canada and the People’s Republic of China and to consider ways of re-establishing contact between the two countries. In the past, our relations have always been positive, cordial and characterized by a spirit of collaboration.

Canada was one of the first countries to recognize the People’s Republic of China when it was created and to establish trade and diplomatic relations with the country. Consider the writings of Quebec physician Norman Bethune, who took part in the legendary Long March of the Communist Party of China. Consider as well the aid provided by Canada, in the form of wheat and other grain, when the Chinese were literally starving to death. I think that this is a solid foundation for key, cordial relations between the two countries, but it is obvious that these relations have deteriorated dramatically in recent months.

We therefore set up this committee to look into the deterioration of relations, the possible causes and potential solutions.

Given that this is a minority government and that an election can be called at any time, we chose to partition our study into sections to safeguard our work.

Accordingly, we produce periodic progress reports on what we have done so far. For example, we issued a report on the situation in Hong Kong, which I believe deserves our careful attention. At that point in our work we were looking into the security issue.

In this part of the study pertaining to security, we were looking at everything from the Chinese government’s foreign influence operations in Canada to interference or, at the very least, possible espionage activities by Chinese companies that report to the Government of the People's Republic of China. Obviously, the Canada-China relationship concerning microbiology research was also discussed.

I must say that, for our part, this portion of our investigation on security started out rather candidly. Of course, we wanted to look into the CanSino case, for example, the collaboration between Canadian and Chinese institutions to develop a vaccine. Curiously, the plug was pulled on this collaboration, and now China is using vaccine diplomacy to increase its influence in the world by generously offering its vaccine to developing countries that desperately need it, but also making sure to create a state-client relationship between the People's Republic of China and these countries.

When the Public Health Agency of Canada appeared on March 22, we met with its president, Iain Stewart, as well as with Guillaume Poliquin, who heads the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg. We were surprised when Mr. Stewart refused to answer entirely legitimate questions. The fact remains that, on March 31, 2019, two researchers at the Winnipeg laboratory, Dr. Xiangguo Qiu and Dr. Keding Cheng, took a commercial Air Canada flight carrying two living viruses, Ebola and Henipah, in their luggage to deliver them to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, now infamous due to the rumours and allegations that continue to circulate to the effect that the coronavirus may have escaped from the facility.

Obviously, we were concerned by the fact that they were able to carry two extremely dangerous viruses to a Chinese laboratory on a commercial flight. In the same March 22 committee meeting, Mr. Stewart explained that everything was done according to standards. I do not know what standards apply when carrying deadly viruses on a regular commercial flight. In any event, we were assured that this was the case, and we have no reason to believe that this approach was based on a scientific, evidence-based assessment.

I would like to point out that Dr. Qiu received the Governor General's award in 2018 for having helped develop a treatment for Ebola at the Winnipeg laboratory. This award is normally given to Canadian citizens or permanent residents of Canada. This shows how highly Dr. Qiu's work was regarded.

On July 5, 2019, however, Dr. Qiu, Dr. Cheng and their students were removed from the Winnipeg laboratory. That is more than a little curious.

We also learned that, on January 20, 2021, the couple was officially fired, and an explanation has never been given for their removal or their dismissal. Candidly, I asked Mr. Stewart why, if everything was done according to standards in the transfer of the viruses on a commercial Air Canada flight to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the couple had been removed from the Winnipeg laboratory and fired without explanation. Mr. Stewart told us that he could not answer that question.

We asked him why he could not answer and told him that he was required to. It became apparent that Mr. Stewart had certain privacy concerns. Of course, these concerns may be legitimate. They may have to do with national security or an ongoing criminal investigation. All of these concerns may be entirely legitimate.

We gave Mr. Stewart the opportunity to send the committee information confidentially, so that it could better understand what was going on without any potentially harmful information in terms of the protection of personal information, national security or a criminal investigation reaching the public.

To our surprise, we received a letter from Mr. Stewart stating simply that he could not submit any documents because of the Privacy Act. Despite the fact that we offered him the opportunity to provide the information confidentially, he told us that he could not comply or did not want to comply with this request from the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations.

We insisted and, a few days later, on April 20, we received a first batch of heavily redacted documents. Obviously, we were unhappy that the agency continues to refuse to provide the documents. We met with the House's Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel, who told us that the committee was within its rights. We therefore recalled Mr. Stewart, who appeared with Mr. Poliquin on May 10.

We were once again told that it was impossible to provide the committee with the information requested, because of the provisions of the Privacy Act, as if the parliamentary committee were just another litigant requesting information from the agency. This parliamentary committee is not just another litigant requesting information in the House.

I want to share an opinion that was shared with us by the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel of the House of Commons. It states, and I quote:

...the committee's powers to send for papers and records comes from section 18 of the Constitution. It comes from parliamentary privilege and gives the power to send for persons and papers. It is at a higher level than ordinary statutes, and Speaker Milliken in his ruling and the Supreme Court of Canada have recognized the primacy of Constitutional provisions, and in particular parliamentary privilege....

It's the same authority that is pointed to, and that authority from Speaker Milliken makes it very clear, as does the authority in other Parliaments, that the constitutional authority of committees and of the House supersedes and is not limited by ordinary statutes like the Privacy Act or the Access to Information Act....Speaker Millliken was explicit on the point that the statutes do not allow the government to unilaterally determine that something would be confidential.

At the May 10 meeting, our colleague from Wellington—Halton Hills also referred to provisions of the Privacy Act that clearly state that the act does not apply to parliamentary committees, it applies only to individuals subject to the law who request information. After repeated refusals by authorities at the Public Health Agency of Canada, the committee adopted a motion that is very similar to the one moved today by the member for Wellington—Halton Hills.

At first, our questions for PHAC were straightforward, but PHAC's stubborn, systematic refusal to provide the information requested by the special committee raised suspicions. Moreover, we have since learned of some disturbing information.

Last May, The Globe and Mail reported that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service had recommended that two researchers, Dr. Qiu and her husband, Dr. Cheng, have their access to the Winnipeg laboratory revoked for national security reasons. Why? CSIS also had concerns, particularly about the transfer of intellectual property, with regard to information that the couple and their students had sent to China.

That same month, The Globe and Mail reported that at least seven scientists at the Winnipeg laboratory were collaborating with the Chinese army, publishing several articles jointly. One researcher, Professor Feihu Yan, had been able to work at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg despite working directly for the People's Liberation Army of China.

From what we have been able to glean, Canadian authorities have been rather nonchalant about national security. When Parliament tried to get to the bottom of this apparent lack of rigour, the government invoked completely specious reasons in a bid to escape its obligation to answer to Parliament.

It was disturbing enough that the Public Health Agency of Canada was refusing to answer questions from members of Parliament. It was even more disturbing to hear the Prime Minister and some of his ministers doing exactly the same thing during oral question period, when they responded to members' questions by saying that the two people had been fired and that they could unfortunately not provide any more information. By doing this, the Prime Minister and the ministers in question may also have been breaching the privileges of the House.

Getting back to what I was saying at the beginning of my speech, the issue here, beyond the partisan bickering, is Parliament's supremacy over ordinary Canadian laws by virtue of the parliamentary privilege enshrined in the Canadian Constitution, which the government is using as an excuse to refuse to provide parliamentarians with the information they are requesting. We thought only PHAC was doing this, but we now have proof that it is the entire government. Under the circumstances, we have no choice but to support our colleague's motion.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague. I would like to ask him a question.

Does he think that, when the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations adopted the two motions and in the House's debate on this motion, everyone took care to make decisions that protected national security and the integrity of an ongoing criminal investigation?

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Madam Speaker, we clearly showed that members of the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations wanted to act responsibly.

When we realized that there were legitimate national security, privacy and criminal investigation concerns, we gave the Public Health Agency of Canada the opportunity to provide the information confidentially. Even so, the agency refused.

We had no choice but to resort to extreme measures and put the matter before the House. That is what we are doing today in order to shed light on the matter and make the information available to parliamentarians.

To be clear, we are not going to get our hands on the information and then release it all, jeopardizing privacy, national security and police investigations. It will go to the law clerk, and we will assess whether some of the information can be made public. I can assure the House that we will not act irresponsibly.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. I also thank him for his shout-out to Dr. Bethune. It is not every day that he gets a mention in the Parliament of Canada.

The government lacks transparency and refuses to disclose certain documents because it has something to hide. I would like to hear a little bit more from my colleague about that.

What does he think the government is trying to hide from us?

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Madam Speaker, I usually do not respond to questions that are purely hypothetical. Sadly, this one is just that, in every respect.

I have no idea what the government is trying to hide, but it seems to have been rather nonchalant about national security, and when we try to get to the bottom of what might have happened, it refuses to give us information by invoking utterly specious arguments that just do not hold water legally.

This government boasted about standing up for the rights of parliamentarians when Stephen Harper's government refused to provide information pertaining to Afghan detainees. At the time, Speaker Milliken made an unequivocal ruling. We are asking the government to comply with that ruling. That is all.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Madam Speaker, the power of Parliament to send for papers is absolute. That is a very well-established privilege and power that we have in this place.

While the Liberals may rightly have concerns about the sensitive nature of the documents, there are no arguments that can be made against Parliament's right to send for these papers and to organize a way in which it views them. That cannot be argued against.

However, my question to my hon. colleague concerns scientific collaboration. Does he have any ideas on how a country like Canada, while protecting very sensitive technology and information, could find secure ways to collaborate internationally while also looking after our national security interests? Does he have any thoughts on that particular subject?

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Madam Speaker, as the saying goes, every cloud has a silver lining.

Rather than trying to protect itself and covering up the truth, the government should be using these events as an opportunity to strengthen the safeguards that must be in place any time countries collaborate on such sensitive issues as microbiology and virology research.

We know very well that the components of biological warfare are strictly forbidden on the international scene, but we also know that there are a number of delinquent rogue states. We therefore need to tighten security measures to ensure that the results of research done in Canada do not fall into the wrong hands.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his very eloquent speech. He is as relevant as ever, and I just hope to speak as well as him in the House of Commons one day, when I become a “grown-up”.

In his speech earlier, my colleague said that Liberal members were quite co-operative in committee on the subject of requesting information from the Public Health Agency of Canada.

However, the speeches we have heard from the Liberal members so far this morning suggest a certain closed-mindedness. Right before my colleague's speech, a Liberal member spoke for 10 minutes about something else entirely, namely the progress of vaccination in Canada. She did not appear to have any interest in debating the motion before the House today. There seems to be a double standard.

Can my colleague think of an explanation for this?

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his complimentary comments.

His question is very interesting. It is true that, at first, the Liberals on the committee appeared to be protecting the Public Health Agency of Canada. I denounced their behaviour, asking what the government members were trying to hide from members of Parliament. This provoked anger on the part of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Afterwards, faced with the obstinacy and stubbornness of the people from the agency, even the Liberal members had no choice but to acknowledge that the agency had violated parliamentary privilege. They therefore joined us in adopting this motion, which is almost identical to the one presented here today.

Of course, I would expect the Liberals to be consistent and to vote in favour of today's motion, as they did in committee. However, it appears that the Prime Minister and some of his ministers have adopted a different position, which may cause our colleagues to adopt a different position as well. If that is the case, I will be very disappointed.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is a real pleasure working with this member at the foreign affairs committee and the Canada-China committee. We do not always agree, but, more and more, we find ourselves in alignment.

There is an important principle at stake here, which is the supremacy of Parliament in a parliamentary democracy and, therefore, the right of Parliament to send for the documents that it needs in order to scrutinize the actions of the executive. In a case like this, where it seems like something very serious has gone wrong, it is important for Parliament to be able to exercise that power in a responsible way.

The member rightly pointed out that there has been some flip-flopping among the Liberals at committee. They initially voted against the motion, but, they said, only because it did not give enough time. Then the second motion that sent for documents was actually a motion proposed by a Liberal member and supported by Liberal MPs. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs said that the justice department gets it wrong in its legal advice all the time. Then we have the Minister of Foreign Affairs repudiating the principle of document disclosure.

Can the member comment on how the Liberals have been back and forth on this issue of the right of Parliament, and how we need to stand together for this principle of parliamentary supremacy in our democracy?

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Madam Speaker, this is a test of the Liberals' principles today. I remember that they made of point of demanding that Stephen Harper's government comply with parliamentary privilege in the Afghan detainee matter. We will see if the principles the Liberals claimed to espouse at the time still stand when they are in power.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to join in this debate today. I think it is an extremely important debate, having to do, principally, with the powers of the members of Parliament to do their duty to hold the government to account and to be, as has been determined, the ultimate arbiter of democracy in this country, once having been elected. I say this after listening to some very fulsome speeches, particularly by senior, experienced members of Parliament like the member for Wellington—Halton Hills and the member for Montarville discussing these important matters.

I share with the member for Montarville a question, I suppose, as to why we are doing this as an opposition day motion, as there was not an order of reference to the House from the parliamentary committee, the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations. I think it could have been dealt with that way. Perhaps it has something to do with why the government seems to have politicized this, as opposed to treating it as a serious motion with respect to the duties of parliamentarians, which is how I wish to treat it. I think this is something that should be treated that way by the House.

After all, we are dealing with the result of a unanimous decision of the Canada-China committee, after much deliberation, consideration and various amendments to the motion to ensure that it would be unanimous. We were unanimously of the view that the committee needed and was entitled to the documents in their unredacted form, so that we could carry out the committee's duty of due diligence with respect to whether the government, through PHAC, was withholding documents that we needed in order to do our job.

We have to put it into the context of the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations. The committee was formed for a very good reason, given the circumstances we were facing in the fall of 2019 with the situation with China. A number of things had come up that were of great concern, particularly the detention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, as well as relationships of concern and matters that had been raised. For example, there were concerns about the co-operation between the People's Liberation Army and the Canadian Armed Forces for a training exercise, which was subsequently cancelled due to security concerns being raised by some of our allies.

We heard testimony at the Canada-China committee regarding foreign influence within Canada and intimidation of Canadians, Chinese students and other Chinese nationals in Canada, which raised concerns. We had concerns about whether this had been dealt with properly by government agencies, police forces and others. We had concerns regarding the influence of China, through its agencies and other efforts, on research and intellectual property capture at our universities and other institutions.

This matter came up with respect to the Public Health Agency of Canada. The committee was concerned about the level of collaboration with Chinese researchers, in particular with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, and then the indications of co-operation with researchers who were associated with the People's Liberation Army, as well, and its other lab in China, which is engaged in research with a military point of view.

These concerns were serious. They were legitimate. They were relevant to the relationship between Canada and China, what measures Canada was taking to protect itself and whether it was doing a proper job doing so. These are matters of great concern, and the committee, under its obligation to carry out this task assigned to it by Parliament, was doing this work. As it happened, we all know what the Public Health Agency of Canada decided when we asked for documentation behind the notorious incident, in the sense of being well known and concerning, of the two individuals, researchers, being escorted out of the laboratory in Winnipeg and the subsequent termination of their services by the Public Health Agency of Canada.

This was something we were looking into in good faith to attempt to discover the factual basis and to see whether the concerns that were raised were dealt with appropriately and whether there were other concerns Canada might have with respect to this matter that were not being properly looked after. In fact, as was pointed out by the member for Wellington—Halton Hills, our job, in part, is to ensure that if there is something wrong, and there clearly was something wrong, this kind of activity would not occur again.

This is a normal carrying out of the function of Parliament that is supported by law, by our Constitution and by our rules of procedure. As has been pointed out, it is very well established, but it was not very well established for a long time. It was established by Parliament in the classic and seminal ruling of Speaker Peter Milliken in April 2010, on a case involving the necessity of a parliamentary committee, another special committee, seeking documentation in support of an inquiry into Canada's activities in Afghanistan in relation to its obligations toward prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention.

This was of a much higher level of concern and evaluation, and the refusal of the government of the day to make those documents available to the special committee on Afghanistan ultimately resulted in orders of the House and subsequent activities, which I will not go into in detail. However, the importance of the ruling of Speaker Milliken was that, under the Constitution, particularly section 18 of the Constitution, under the Parliament of Canada Act and under the rules and procedures of our House, this was something that very clearly needed to be delineated and was delineated by the Speaker.

This information, of course, was available to our committee and the rulings of our committee. When we made the inquiries that have been outlined by the member for Montarville and the member for Wellington—Halton Hills, we did not receive the documents, and the reasons we were given had to do with statutes such as the Privacy Act and some reference to the context of national security. Well, that does not necessarily give rise to concerns about national security, but we were deprived of these documents.

In the ordinary course of the law, the decisions that were made by the Public Health Agency in refusing to make these documents available were, in fact, already determined by parliamentary procedure and by our own procedural rules: that the Privacy Act does not, in fact, relate to a reason for members of Parliament not having access to these documents.

In its report “Access to Information Requests and Parliamentary Privilege”, the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs reported, back in 1991, as early as then, that “[s]ince parliamentary privileges form part of the Constitution, laws must be interpreted and applied in a manner consistent with them, and where there is a conflict between privileges and statutory provisions, the statutory provisions are 'of no force and effect'”. Therefore, assertions by the Public Health Agency of Canada, and by Mr. Stewart on its behalf, that it could not make documents available to members of Parliament on a parliamentary committee have already, in fact, been overruled, ruled to be of no force or effect.

The specific ruling set out in our Constitution Act, 1982, in section 52, says, “The Constitution of Canada is the supreme law of Canada, and any law that is inconsistent with the provisions of the Constitution is, to the extent of that inconsistency, of no force or effect”. What was being presented to our committee by the Public Health Agency of Canada, on behalf of the Government of Canada, was that it was bound by the Privacy Act not to make available documents to us, as members of Parliament, yet our own Constitution clearly says that such laws are of no force or effect.

That is what we were faced with as a committee, which is why it is not a surprise that the members of the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations, including, as has been pointed out by me, experienced members such as the member for Wellington—Halton Hills, the member for Montarville and of course the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was on the committee as well, another senior member of Parliament, and the other members of Parliament unanimously supported a motion to not accept the rationale and reasons given by the Public Health Agency of Canada to refuse to make available documents in a non-redacted form.

We do not often see such definitive statements about legal matters, but it is pretty clear that the ruling of Speaker Milliken, a very seminal ruling that probably stands ahead of all others in the annals of parliamentary democracies under the Westminster model, is important. In the quotations provided to us in the rulings given by Speaker Milliken and other authorities, there are no limits on the powers of committees to require the production of papers by private bodies or individuals, provided the papers are relevant to the work of the committee as defined by reference. When select committees ordered papers to be produced by national industry, private solicitors all provided and produced papers related to a client. Statutory regulators have been ordered to produce papers whose release was otherwise subject to a statutory restriction.

It is clear that Parliament is not bound by this legislation and, as has been ruled, there are no limits on the powers of Parliament to get access to documents. Precautions need to be taken, and I think our committee, in making its motion, and the motion before us today, provide for some provision to ensure that documents will not be made public unless the committee, having had the opportunity to review the documents, is satisfied that they can be made public.

It is clear the motion before the House today indicates that the committee, although it may have the power to make documents public, does not have to do so in order to make recommendations or findings. That would sufficiently protect any national security issue of revealing details of an ongoing investigation. In lieu of making any information public, the committee may still rely on it for the purpose of making findings and recommendations in any subsequent report to the House. I think that is there for a purpose. It is there to ensure the committee can carry out its due diligence under its duty to do so and also hold government to account, and that if this measure needs to be brought to the attention of the House, it can do so without making any information public that should not be made public.

I think we have made it very clear that, under the committee's jurisdiction and under the powers that are granted to it by the constitution, our rulings of Speaker Milliken and the privileges of Parliament, this is within our purview as members of Parliament to carry out this function.

There are some who may not agree with that. I think we have seen arguments made in the past about that, but it is up to the House itself or members of the House to determine the appropriate way to safeguard the national interests in these questions. We have a situation where the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations has the means to do that through the experience of senior members of this House, as well as the advice of the parliamentary law clerk, who is Parliament's lawyer.

The Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel is giving legal advice to members of Parliament. Members of Parliament in this circumstance, represented by four parties in the House that have party status, are all present and have made a unanimous motion calling for these papers to be available to them in fulfilment of their parliamentary duty. It seems to me this is a matter of constitutional and parliamentary concern, as well as an important matter in dealing with Canada's relationship with China. The committee ought to be able to carry out its work and do so in a proper manner.

I regret that certain members of the Liberal Party who have spoken, in particular the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health, have sought to turn it into a partisan issue. That is regrettable. We have to recognize there are serious moments in this House when we have to look at the privileges of members of Parliament, take them seriously and put aside partisan differences in the pursuit of ensuring that we have a Parliament that can operate under the rules based on precedents and recognize that in our parliamentary system, Parliament is supreme. It is Parliament that has the ultimate power and control over whether a government is in office or not. This is not a motion of confidence obviously, but it is a question of whether the House ought to support the motion of a committee asking for documents to be made available to it in the ordinary course of conducting its business.

It is clearly a matter properly before the committee. It is one that is of great importance and important enough for a unanimous decision of the committee to pursue this question by having access to the proper documentation that is necessary for it to conduct its study.

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

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the arguments my hon. colleague has made.

The special committee was responsible for the two motions that it adopted ordering the government to produce these documents. Both orders ensured that no information injurious to national security would be made public and no details concerning an ongoing criminal investigation would be made public and so too is the motion in front of the House today in clause (d).

The difference between the motion in front of us today and the opposition supply day motion introduced by Mr. Dosanjh in December of 2009 and adopted by the House is that the 2009 motion made no provision to prevent the release of information that would be injurious to national security. I will quote from the 2009 motion for the benefit of the House and the member. It states, “accordingly the House hereby orders that these documents be produced in their original and uncensored form forthwith.” In other words, the documents in the 2009 motion would be made public immediately and without redaction, and that obviously raised concerns of the government of the day about national security and the protection of Canadian troops in the field.

I am wondering if my hon. colleague from St. John's East could comment on that.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Wellington—Halton Hills, who is also my colleague on the Canada-China committee, does make a distinction.

At that time, there was a clear opportunity, because of the wording of that motion, for the historic ruling of Speaker Milliken to be made after considerable debate and deliberation. That motion was in December, as the member noted, and the decision of Speaker Milliken was made on April 27 of the next year after a number of manoeuvres, motions and actions, as well as considerable debate on the issue, which resulted in a ruling that did in fact say that the House had full power to have these documents made available. He offered an opportunity for the parties to consider the way in which those documents—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

We will have to move on to the next question.

The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands has the floor.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when the member for St. John's East referenced that he hoped there would not be too much partisan discussion in today's debate, I am sure he was referring to when the member for New Brunswick Southwest questioned the allegiance my colleague, the parliamentary secretary from Pickering, has to her country when he suggested that perhaps she was applying for a job with the Chinese government. I am sure that is the partisan political talk he was referencing when he said he was hoping that would not occur today.

The documents requested by the committee were provided to the committee by the health department, and those were redacted by the health department government officials, not the minister's office. For people who do not know, there is a separation between the department, where the staff who are there forever, versus the ministerial staff. I am curious why the information that was provided was not seen to be enough by the committee that required to go a step further.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I did not actually hear the intervention to which he objects. If his reporting is correct, I would certainly agree with him that is probably unparliamentary and certainly uncalled for in this House and in this debate.

As to the question of whether it is the minister's office or bureaucrats we are talking about, I do not think it matters terribly. It was determined by the committee that the advice given to the Public Health Agency was not in keeping with the rules and parliamentary procedure and that the committee was entitled and in fact it was within its power to request them and it needed them for its work.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for stating the importance of making the documents available to the special committee. As he himself said, it must be done with the necessary caution and disclosure. However, I am shocked that we had to submit a motion in the House to force the agency to make the documents available when they are so important to the committee's work.

I do not need to know the justification for this refusal to disclose information so important that a motion had to be tabled and debated in the House, because I understand, but I would like an explanation.

Can my colleague answer me?

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I suspect the reason it has come to this is because the government itself was well aware of this debate going on in our committee, and instead of the government giving instructions to the Public Health Agency to co-operate on the basis of precedence, the government decided to stand by and let the matter fall the way it does. Why it has to come to an opposition day motion is a question perhaps the Conservatives can better answer. There are various other ways of doing it; I think they just decided this was most expedient.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from St. John's East.

I find today's debate very interesting. I would like to hear more from my colleague about transparency and openness and about the possibility of getting access to the documents. The Liberals have often spoken about an open and transparent government, yet we are obliged to force them to hand over documents they wish to keep secret.

Can my colleague tell me how it affects our ability to act as members of Parliament if the government does not provide us with all the information?

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, for starters, it is very unfortunate. We are talking about a constitutional proposition here. In fact, I am a little surprised by the resistance we are seeing today, especially given that the members of the committee were unanimous in their support for this motion and action, led by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

It is a little surprising, and I do not know why they are resisting the way they are. It should be a matter of course. Knowing that the protections were there, the concern of the committee was to ensure there would be no reason to be concerned about national security before releasing any documents.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we all know that this is not the first time we have seen the Liberal government refuse to allow parliamentary oversight on very serious issues of the day. It has refused repeatedly to submit unredacted documents at many committees. I have been on the health and finance committees.

Does my colleague think this constitutes transparency by any stretch of the imagination?

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, there does seem to be a bit of a habit forming circumstance with the government, not wishing to share information and documents that are within the purview of members of Parliament.

The government talks the talk on a lot of things, but it does not walk the walk. This is another example of that by the Liberal government.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Calgary Nose Hill.

Much is said these days about conspiracy theories. A conspiracy theory is the idea that some covert organization or group of individuals is controlling and directing public events with some nefarious purpose in mind. A conspiracy theory supposes that events are controlled, coordinated and directed, and to a greater extent than appear on the surface. Conspiracy theories presume that someone, somewhere is ultimately coordinating all that takes place.

In the case of events that have unfolded at the Winnipeg Microbiology Lab and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, there was clearly no conspiracy at play. In fact, what we see is the polar opposite of a conspiracy. What we see from the government is an extreme lack of coordination, awareness and basic competence. It is not that the government is secretly trying to control our lives, but rather it is unable to control anything, including even to exercise enough control over its own operations to secure the safe functioning of vital public institutions.

Conspiracy theories always vastly overestimate the competence of government, and in this case, it is clear that the stench of incompetence, not conspiracy, should be what is driving our concerns.

When it comes to what happened in Winnipeg and in Wuhan, there are many things that we still do not know, and that is why the opposition is seeking documents, through our motion today, which will further elucidate the situation. There are many things that we do not know, but here is what we know so far.

We know that two scientists at the Winnipeg Microbiology Lab sent deadly Ebola and Henipah viruses to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China in March 2019. The Wuhan Institute of Virology has connections with the Chinese military and engages in so-called “gain-of-function experiments”.

Gain-of-function experiments are experiments whereby efforts are made to make a virus more deadly or more contagious for research purposes. Therefore, we know that deadly viruses were sent from Canada to a lab in China, and that this lab has a mandate to create new and more dangerous viruses and to collaborate with the Chinese military.

We also know that American officials had already raised serious concerns about security at the Wuhan Institute of Virology before these Canadian viruses were sent. U.S. embassy officials sent cables noting “a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory.” These cables were sent a full year before Canada proceeded with its own deadly virus transfer to Wuhan.

We know, according to sources who spoke to The Globe and Mail, that the Public Health Agency revoked the security clearance for two scientists at the recommendation of CSIS. CSIS was focused on the people who Dr. Qiu was talking to in China and intellectual property that may have been given to Chinese authorities.

We know that two scientists involved in this transfer of deadly viruses were expelled a few months after that transfer, along with various Chinese students, for so-called “policy breaches”. They no longer work at the lab, although we still have no idea why.

We know as well about explicit connections between the Winnipeg lab and Chinese military researchers. For example, Feihu Yan, not one of the two scientists involved in the Ebola and Henipah transfer, came from the People's Liberation Army Academy of Military Medical Sciences.

Military Medical Sciences should have triggered someone. It should have triggered an awareness that maybe something was going on. However, the person involved in the PLA Military Medical Sciences lab worked at the Winnipeg lab and even co-authored a number of papers, in which he directly identifies his simultaneous affiliation with the PLA academy and with the Winnipeg lab. In other words, this Chinese military scientist was hiding in plain sight. It seems that the government did not know or did not care that we had co-operation between a supposedly high-security Canadian lab and the Chinese military.

To summarize, we know that there was co-operation between Canada's only level-4 laboratory, a lab that is supposed to be so secret that most Canadian researchers cannot access it, and the Chinese military. We know that deadly viruses were transferred from Canada's only level-4 lab to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in spite of serious concerns about security protocols in Wuhan already raised by the Americans. We know that other people with Chinese military affiliations were working at the Winnipeg lab. We also know that the people responsible for the transfer of deadly viruses as well as others were subsequently expelled from the lab following the recommendation of CSIS.

We know, in general, that the Government of China runs vast operations that try to influence the direction of discussion at universities and gathers intellectual property that will advance its national interests. The leverage that is exerted on institutions of research through various associations and through threats to withdraw funding for students are well known and well established. Indeed, it is core to how the Government of China operates. It tries to use research partnerships with foreign countries to learn from and absorb technologies for both civilian and military applications, including for the horrific human rights abuses that are taking place in China as we speak.

We also know that the COVID-19 outbreak began in Wuhan. On the face of it, it would seem like a very odd coincidence for a pandemic involving a novel coronavirus to emerge from the same area where gain-of-function experiments are being done on coronaviruses in a lab with known security deficiencies, yet to have had nothing to do with the lab in question.

The Chinese government's own more than usually aggressive secrecy around information about the origins of this virus clearly points to a cover-up. By now, many independent experts, including Dr. Fauci, have recognized the lab-leak theory is credible and requires further investigation.

The Liberals were calling the lab-leak theory a conspiracy theory until at least a couple weeks ago. Now the government has reversed its position and backed President Biden's efforts to get to the bottom of what happened. That reversal is a good step. However, if we are to get to the bottom of what has been happening in Chinese government-controlled and military-affiliated labs, then we also need to get to the bottom of the relationship that existed between military research in China and our own Winnipeg lab.

To the point about conspiracies, the lab-leak theory is not a conspiracy theory because it does not allege conspiracy. It does not suppose a conspiracy, rather it supposes incompetence. Just as there seems to have been severe bungling of security at the Winnipeg lab in failing to protect our research from espionage and pursuing inadvisable co-operation with the Chinese military, there may have been severe bungling at the Wuhan lab, leading to the leaking out of a novel virus that has now killed over three and a half million people.

Nobody in the House is suggesting that COVID-19 was manufactured in a Winnipeg lab or that coronaviruses were, at any point, transferred from Canada to China. However, we are questioning the level of co-operation in general that seems to have been taking place between Winnipeg and the various Chinese military-affiliated labs, including the one in Wuhan. We are asking these questions because everything we know so far points to severe naiveté and even wilful blindness on the part of the government when it comes to protecting biosecurity in Canada.

There is no conspiracy. The truth may be even more alarming, that the politicians who were supposed to be responsible for keeping us healthy and safe acted with supreme incompetence and showed no understanding of the risks associated with opening the door to Chinese military scientists and military institutions.

There are things that we know and there are things that we do not know, but now what has been done in the darkness must be brought to the light. Canadians must know about the extent to which Canadian research has contributed to dangerous experiments being conducted by the Chinese military. Canadians must know so they can hold their government accountable and insist on putting in place clear protocols that protect our security and our national interests, and that reduce the risk of catastrophic global pandemics in the future.

In March, the Canada-China committee heard testimony from Iain Stewart, president of the Public Health Agency of Canada, about this matter. The only useful testimony that we were able to glean from his appearance was that Canadian labs did not appear to conduct due diligence before they transferred deadly viruses to verify how the viruses were going to be used. Otherwise, he completely refused to answer questions.

Therefore, the committee passed two separate motions ordering PHAC to hand over documents. The committee did not insist on making these documents public. Recognizing the potential national security issues involved, the committee ordered the production of documents for in-camera review, but even then the agency refused to comply.

I am not surprised if these documents contain embarrassing information for the government, including information about serious security lapses. The fact is that in law, the government must hand over these documents. Parliamentary committees have an unfettered right to send for documents. This right is established in our Constitution and has primacy over statute law, and this right was recognized in the precedent-setting ruling of Speaker Peter Milliken.

The fact that committees have a right to summon these documents has been specifically supported by all the Liberal members of the Canada-China committee. In fact, the second motion ordering the production of these documents was proposed by the Liberal member for Cumberland—Colchester and passed unanimously by the committee.

At the time, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs declared, respecting his own government's refusal to hand over the documents, “lawyers are not always right. Department of Justice lawyers are particularly...not always right.” He further stated, “I say that to caution the Public Health Agency of Canada to get a second opinion.... You need a second opinion, because I think the justice department is not giving you the best advice.”

The law is clear. The entire Liberal complement on the committee agrees that the government must disclose these documents. When it comes to document disclosure, it seems that we again have a case of the Liberals thinking that the law does not apply to them. It may be hard for the government to acknowledge the degree to which its incompetence has put both the safety and security of Canadians and Canadian research at risk.

Admitting they have a problem and disclosing all of the information is the first step to finding the solution that we need. Let us start the process of getting to the bottom of this. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Let us see the documents so that we can fix the problem, hold the government accountable, and more importantly, ensure that these serious security lapses that endanger the health and safety of Canadians never happen again.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan for his speech.

The Liberal government often expresses reservations or seems reluctant to step on the toes of anyone it considers to be a giant. That is what we saw when we asked the government to regulate the web giants. The government tells us that we have to be careful, because they will not agree to be regulated, they will resist or it could spark a trade war.

I would like my colleague's opinion. Does he think it is possible that, in this case, the government is reluctant to provide the information we are asking for with all the transparency the situation requires, because it is afraid of the reaction of this other giant, which is also one of Canada's trading partners?

Is it possible that it is because our current government lacks a little courage?