Sources say Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng were escorted from the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg on July 5. Since then, the University of Manitoba has ended their appointments, reassigned her graduate students, and cautioned staff, students and faculty about traveling to China.
What the documents about the Winnipeg lab scandal show is interesting and relevant. But the biggest problem here might the one that was apparent from the start: the sheer amount of secrecy that enveloped this situation.Scientists Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng worked in the Level 4 virology facility at the Winnipeg-based National Microbiology Lab , which is equipped to deal with the most serious and deadly human and animal diseases.
Poilievre claims Trudeau is covering up lapses at high-security lab, PM accuses rival of spewing conspiraciesCommittee of MPs, former judges to examine firing of 2 National Microbiology Lab scientists It's also possible that both sides were motivated by at least some amount of justifiable concern — that the government had legitimate cause to demand as much protection as possible for information that could involve national security, and that the opposition was well within its rights and responsibilities to demand as much transparency as possible to hold the government to account.
What those documents show offers reasons for concern about the behaviour of the two scientists and how well the lab enforced its protocols. Opposition MPs have every reason to ask whether more could have been done at the time and what has been done since to improve security policies. Officials from the agency probably could point to a stack of internal legal opinions and policies that supported their decisions about what could be released publicly. And maybe agency and security officials had concerns about how opposition MPs originally proposed to handle those documents.Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says researchers at the Winnipeg-based lab should not be allowed to collaborate with China.to be kept secret in the first place.
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