Canada-China Relations committee  I'm not an employee of those organizations, so I couldn't speak to them.

Canada-China Relations committee  It's very conceivable that this would have been a red flag. I certainly remember at the time that the nature of the concerns over the individuals, as you stated, evolved to something completely different. At the time, the level of concern was much lower—potentially even things that we could manage within the lab.

Canada-China Relations committee  Mr. Chair, in my memory it was a discussion with the senior executives within the Public Health Agency of Canada on how to initiate what was ultimately the administrative investigation. It was the orchestration of how to actually introduce this to the employees' supervisors and then to the employees themselves on the 5th of July.

Canada-China Relations committee  It's not something I've done a review of.

Canada-China Relations committee  Mr. Chair, can I hear the question again, please?

Canada-China Relations committee  Mr. Chair, the red flags would have been the ones that amounted to the discussion with CSIS in August 2018. Some of those warning signs were the affiliation with Chinese institutes. There was frequent travel to China. There were the issues that were uncovered relating to visiting scientists who were not always supervised.

Canada-China Relations committee  Mr. Chair, that's another good question. This has been part of my own reflection—even this last week, after reading all of the documents. I'm not sure if I mentioned it before, but to my knowledge, the April 2020 and June 2020 CSIS reports are not things I had seen before. That I hadn't seen them before can be explained by how I had already resigned from the position by that point, so I wouldn't have expected the employer to show them to me.

Canada-China Relations committee  Mr. Chair, I'm not sure I'm in a position to speak to that because I don't have a role within the Government of Canada anymore. I certainly do hope.... Again, judging by the conversations with the witnesses who preceded me, it sounds like the level of interaction and engagement between the leadership team at the NML and the security authorities is greatly heightened.

Canada-China Relations committee  Mr. Chair, my takeaway is that the conversations between security and the specialized scientific institutes need to be very active and profound. This can't be something that's just left as a background conversation. Again, it's one of the reasons I was pleased to hear that it sounds like this is happening now between the security agencies and the management team at the Public Health Agency of Canada and the NML.

Canada-China Relations committee  Mr. Chair, I can absolutely see how, in the light of 2024, there would be concerns over the transfer. Certainly at the time, though, we were acting upon the information we had and acting under a different operational tempo where the concern, as I stated before, was assurance on things like biosafety.

Canada-China Relations committee  Mr. Chair, it would be difficult for me to say whether it was highly unusual. Certainly the transfer of materials between different laboratories would happen on a regular basis.

Canada-China Relations committee  Mr. Chair, I think that's best coming from the current employees of the NML. I don't specifically recall. It would have been a very low incidence, if at all.

Canada-China Relations committee  Yes.

Canada-China Relations committee  Mr. Chair, it's a very good and very valid question. I remember the nature of my concern. That email was a follow-up to my original email that had been sent to the team, where I explicitly said that I had a concern, and I outlined the nature of my concern. All the concerns were about the validity of the recipient.

Canada-China Relations committee  Mr. Chair, that's a good question. One of the examples that I haven't yet mentioned—again, drawing upon some of the practices within the U.K.—is that there's a program there called the academic technology approval scheme. This is integrated right at the national level. It's integrated with the visa scheme.