Full Comment - Liberals cry 'racism' to cover up another Chinese interference scandal

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00:00:44.980 the winnipeg lab story seems to have it all doesn't it it has international intrigue it has

00:00:55.720 biodiversity as bioweapons it has political intrigue court challenges everything on the go we're just

00:01:03.360 starting to find out about it and we still don't know enough hello my name is brian lily this is

00:01:08.140 the full comment podcast and this week we're going to delve into the winnipeg lab story we were told

00:01:13.660 that we couldn't find out why two scientists were suddenly fired from their positions there after

00:01:18.420 years of service because of national security concerns recently hundreds of pages of evidence

00:01:24.640 were released to the house of commons and to the general public as a result what did we find out

00:01:30.720 about that and what are the political implications we're joined by two great guests today phil gurski

00:01:36.140 is a retired cesus officer who spent many years in the service and michael chon conservative mp

00:01:42.520 foreign affairs critic and someone who has been at the forefront of fighting to get these documents

00:01:47.160 released genuine thanks for the time thanks brian great to be here let me start with you phil on on

00:01:54.480 the security and intelligence side now that we've seen the documents was there anything in there that

00:02:02.260 jumped out at you and said these should never have been released due to security issues national

00:02:07.980 security concerns it's a great question brian and those of us who worked in national security we are

00:02:14.700 pledged to protect two major aspects of what we do that is sources and methods so for example if you've

00:02:22.480 got a unique human source that's infiltrated let's say a terrorist cell the last thing you want is for

00:02:27.740 that person's name to be released because that person ends up dead okay so you gotta be very careful

00:02:32.060 with that in terms of methods you may have a way to crack a code for example or access someone's

00:02:37.560 communications that are trying to be hidden and you don't want the bad guys to find that out either

00:02:41.980 so without going into the details as to the documentation that was released finally to

00:02:47.360 those who wanted to to see it my position as a former thesis analyst and i also spent 17 and a half

00:02:53.720 years at csc so even more sensitive signals intelligence is that yes the canadian public has

00:02:59.560 a right to know especially when governments are ignoring a problem such as chinese interference 0.91

00:03:04.640 in fact of our biotechnology and yes there were concerns about protecting sources and methods i you know

00:03:11.240 and as a retiree maybe i have a bit of a biased opinion but i err more on the side of releasing

00:03:16.600 more than than releasing less insofar and provided that nothing really really sensitive makes it in

00:03:22.920 the public domain i think canadians should learn more about this because we clearly have a government

00:03:27.400 that wants to keep from us uh this very embarrassing story it's uh really damaged our reputation with our

00:03:34.400 allies as to why we let two chinese scientists link to the chinese communist party to the people liberation

00:03:39.760 working in a level four lab with the most dangerous materials known on the planet why the government

00:03:44.860 failed to um prevent them from doing so obviously it's a very embarrassing story for them and i think

00:03:50.280 what we're learning just simply points out something i've been saying for great a great uh long time now

00:03:54.580 that this government um had the intelligence in advance about these people and didn't abide by it and

00:03:59.940 that's a huge problem by they didn't abide by it do you think that they didn't act soon enough to

00:04:05.280 remove the the two scientists and we're talking about uh uh jing guau ki and her husband uh

00:04:11.660 kering chen they he was a a bit lower on the scale than she was but she was one of the top scientists

00:04:18.660 there they were both working in the lab with some of the the most sensitive material you think they

00:04:23.800 should have gone in and relieved them of their duty sooner it's hard to say if they acted too late

00:04:30.460 brian or didn't act at all so we saw with the leaks of the cesus information on the interference

00:04:35.360 by the people's republic of china in our 2019 and 2021 elections they didn't even read the

00:04:40.880 intelligence to begin with we saw the public safety minister say no i didn't bother reading my inbox to

00:04:45.100 see what cesus told me so it's not so much a matter of reading it you know it's not important or there

00:04:50.900 are other considerations at play here this could very well be a case of we didn't bother you know

00:04:55.520 acknowledging what cesus told us in the first place which is endemic in canada and i've another

00:05:01.580 term i use an awful lot is that we have a very poor intelligence culture here and by that i don't mean

00:05:06.040 cesus and csc and the rcmp i mean officials that don't understand the nature of intelligence don't

00:05:10.960 see the value of it and fail to act on it so it's it could be a matter of not acting soon enough it could

00:05:16.400 be a matter of not bothering to read the intelligence in the first place michael when uh you and your party

00:05:22.040 were raising questions on this going back two three years i remember the prime minister leaning into

00:05:29.520 this issue and warning the conservatives that they didn't want to get into anti-asian asian racism

00:05:37.020 by pushing this story that's that's exactly right brian it you know first first when we first raised this

00:05:45.520 issue three years ago and we asked for these documents the first thing the government did including the

00:05:51.460 prime minister was to accuse us of anti-racism anti-asian racism of sinophobia uh and of uh you

00:06:00.660 know playing partisan games uh which was completely ridiculous and when that tact didn't work he then

00:06:06.820 he then switched to another tact he he hid behind ensacop and said we'll give the documents to ensacop

00:06:12.420 which is the government's uh committee made up of parliamentarians but not a parliamentary committee

00:06:18.200 and that committee can't release these kinds of documents doesn't have the authority to release

00:06:22.800 these kinds of documents so and then that and in fact that that committee can only report to the

00:06:27.720 prime minister correct that's right it's it's a prime minister's committee the members on the committee

00:06:32.660 serve at the pleasure of the prime minister so they're not only gic appointments in other words 0.82

00:06:37.680 governor and council appointments they're at pleasure governor and council appointments the prime

00:06:42.320 minister can dismiss a member at any moment in time the prime minister appoints the chair of the

00:06:46.680 committee the prime minister has the right to redact uh the committee's reports and to demand that the

00:06:52.440 committee rewrite certain sections of reports uh so it's it's essentially a committee under under the

00:06:59.360 pmo's control and so it's not the appropriate place to hold the government accountable when that

00:07:04.880 tact didn't work uh you know they came up with a bunch of other excuses about why we couldn't get the

00:07:10.340 documents they then punted it to an ad hoc committee that sits outside parliament we reluctantly agreed to it

00:07:16.340 uh because after the election the ndp wouldn't uh cooperate with uh the bloc québécois and the

00:07:22.420 conservatives to demand the documents once again and so we were left with this last option and i think

00:07:27.640 what over the last three years has been made a hundred percent clear is that we should have gotten

00:07:34.040 these documents three years ago you know a panel of four mps and three judges said that the public has a

00:07:42.040 right to know these documents that national security was not a legitimate excuse to prevent the release

00:07:48.200 of these documents and that all the government was doing was trying to cover its hide itself from an

00:07:53.120 embarrassing uh lack an embarrassing oversight over our national security so you know i finished by saying

00:08:00.600 this brian when in in ottawa and in canada generally governments are not transparent enough compared to

00:08:08.440 other democracies like the united states like the uk like many european democracies they're just not

00:08:14.680 transparent enough they don't give us the information that parliament and the public deserves and they

00:08:19.420 often do it through three excuses number one they they say it's a national security reason why they can't

00:08:25.740 release documents two they say it's because of privacy concerns or three they just don't give the

00:08:30.920 resources uh put the resources in place so that access to information is done in a more timely

00:08:36.920 manner so whenever you hear you know privacy or national security red flags should go up that the

00:08:41.860 government's just trying to cover its rear end rather than uh protect national security or privacy

00:08:47.940 just today they've been we're recording a couple days before this is released they've um they let it be

00:08:56.120 known that they ordered a national security review of tiktok last september but they're not going to

00:09:04.780 release it the united states is in the middle of congress passing a a bill to ban tiktok through the

00:09:10.200 house of representatives and and and they're putting all kinds of evidence on the table as to why

00:09:15.080 and our government says well we ordered a national security review but we can't release it because of the

00:09:20.860 investment canada act so that's not even national security we found another reason to keep stuff secret

00:09:26.240 michael but before i we delve into some of the details let me let me ask you you just kind of glossed over

00:09:33.580 how much the government fought this and as a long-time observer of parliament both federally

00:09:41.300 and in several provinces having covered quebec and ontario extensively and some other provinces to

00:09:47.080 a lesser degree um i've never seen a government fight the release of documents so hard they ignored

00:09:54.540 votes by parliamentary committees calling for the documents which under our system the document should

00:10:02.440 have been released at that point they ignored a vote of the full house of commons for the documents

00:10:08.980 to be released the clerk of the privy council was called to the bar and censured and they refused to

00:10:15.720 release them and then they took the speaker of the house of commons to court have you ever seen anything

00:10:20.240 so so fulsome in its attempt to block the release of information i haven't brian and what's what's even

00:10:27.480 more ironic and egregious about all of that is that these were four orders of the house and its committee

00:10:36.020 two orders of of the canada china committee and two orders of the house of commons as a whole for these

00:10:44.100 documents the house ordered the government to hand over these documents and what's so ironic about all this

00:10:50.140 is that when the house and its committee made these four orders for the production of these documents

00:10:56.040 the government thumbed its nose at those orders and completely ignored them at the same time the same

00:11:03.960 minister responsible for the winnipeg labs and the public health agency of canada minister patty hadju

00:11:09.440 was issuing orders of her own along with her cabinet colleagues for public health compliance around the

00:11:17.480 pandemic and encouraging canadians and ordering canadians to abide by public health rules all the

00:11:23.240 meanwhile they were thumbing their nose at four orders of the most senior body in the land the

00:11:28.880 parliament of canada so you know the ironies abound here the government clearly was trying to cover

00:11:33.820 itself from political embarrassment um and they as you said they went to great lengths in an unprecedented

00:11:40.200 action they took the speaker of the house of commons to court and then they also triggered an early

00:11:46.800 election in august of 2019 uh sorry 2021 and the reason why that's so significant is that under

00:11:54.220 parliamentary rules these four orders of the house and its committee dissolved with the dissolution of

00:12:00.160 parliament and the calling of a general election so it was a convenient way to make the problem go away

00:12:06.140 and so yes they went to unprecedented steps to to try to bury all of this and here we are three years

00:12:12.680 later and we finally got the documents brian can i just pick up on something that michael just said

00:12:16.900 about irony sure uh i find it highly ironic that a government which ignores national security which

00:12:25.060 ignores intelligence that our agencies produce to try to protect canada from nefarious actors cites

00:12:31.780 national security as a reason not to release documents i mean you you can't say one thing on a monday and

00:12:37.520 say the exact opposite on a tuesday here's a government politics a while okay maybe okay maybe

00:12:42.960 i'm being a little naive here but it just seems to me that i mean this government is is one of the

00:12:48.460 most egregious and i've worked we're going back to the first the first trudeau days is when i started

00:12:52.480 my career so i've been around a long time this government has been the most egregious in ignoring

00:12:56.700 intelligence and for it to cite national security as a reason is laughable secondly um i'm getting

00:13:02.360 really sick and tired of this this anti-racism thing that's being leveraged against our security

00:13:06.600 services and law enforcement saying you know ceases as being anti-chinese racist by suggesting the mere

00:13:12.400 possibility that china's spying on us and sealing our secrets for god's sakes we've been saying this 0.99

00:13:16.900 for 25 years and we've been accused of being racist we're doing so and and those of us who work in this

00:13:22.140 business whether we're law enforcement officers or security intelligence officers we're really growing

00:13:26.720 tired of a bunch of people who've never worked in the business pointing figures at us and calling us

00:13:31.300 racist so just please stop and listen to our intelligence at the same time before going back into the

00:13:36.520 media i remember working um for a municipal government out in the west end of ottawa and

00:13:42.360 there was a large nortel facility next to us and we've all heard the stories of nortel basically being

00:13:49.380 pillaged by huawei to steal all the secrets and uh collapse the company more than once people were

00:13:56.740 escorted out of nortel by police for stealing security secrets or stealing industrial so it's it's both

00:14:04.320 government secrets it's industrial secrets and we've known it's been going on for a while but

00:14:08.820 you know when we look at this winnipeg lab story we know that dr kui was it was 2018 when piak was

00:14:18.180 first advised that she was listed as an inventor on a chinese patent that contained scientific

00:14:25.920 information produced by the uh the canadian lab in winnipeg uh that is not something that she was

00:14:33.560 allowed to do under her terms of employment and she did it without permission and it was for

00:14:38.320 an inhibitor for the ebola virus um she's not fired until uh sometime in 2019 it it's months almost a year

00:14:49.680 later before that happens what jumped out to you phil from the security side the the moving of

00:14:56.860 information the moving of of actual uh virus samples um i mean these all seem to be uh egregious um

00:15:07.460 uh violations that that we shouldn't be uh happy with but they seem to go on for months and months

00:15:15.520 before doing anything one thing that those of us in security intelligence brian have often been

00:15:20.080 accused of is holding our cards too close to our chest uh not informing people in due time not

00:15:26.780 providing enough information a lot of complaints people say well you show me the intelligence but

00:15:30.280 you didn't show it all the intelligence to me you know you can always do things better i know i worked

00:15:35.520 in status intelligence i worked in human intelligence there's always better ways of communicating what you

00:15:39.860 know to your clients to your customers senior government officials that's not the case here

00:15:44.100 cesus would have provided this information in a timely fashion to the people at p hack who needed

00:15:49.760 to know it the reasons why they chose to sit on it ignore it not bother reading it not data not act

00:15:55.680 upon it i really have no idea this is not cesus's fault here now i didn't work china at cesus i was a

00:16:01.080 counterterrorism guy but i knew lots of people that did and i know for a fact that our investigation

00:16:06.000 in the chinese activities on our our soil um counter to sections 2a and 2b the cesus act so foreign

00:16:12.320 espionage and foreign interference have been very robust since the service was created back in 1984

00:16:16.860 out of the old rsb security service cesus is doing its job it's providing the intelligence and

00:16:22.180 they're propagating foreign intelligence from cse as well in terms of signals this stuff is being

00:16:26.440 given to the people that need to get it brian and it's being given to them in a way that they can

00:16:30.220 actually act upon it so the question isn't you know why didn't cesus do its job better the question

00:16:35.760 is why didn't the clients take this seriously and act upon it in a in a in a in a quicker way

00:16:42.360 so that this scientist didn't have access to more information over the months that she did before she

00:16:46.360 was finally fired they're the ones that have to answer your question not cesus yeah so from september

00:16:52.480 2018 until july 5th 2019 is when they're informed that the um there's an investigation into them they

00:17:01.180 should stay home uh pending the results of the investigation uh i i agree with you you know i've

00:17:09.480 heard the complaints that they you know intelligent services can hold their their cards too close to

00:17:15.040 their chest but this is a government we saw this with over several files um especially going into

00:17:21.880 areas like public safety whether it was the bernardo transfer the uh freedom convoy and what messages

00:17:28.260 people read and didn't read about what was going to happen uh what intelligence they read and didn't

00:17:33.020 read uh read um it it seems like information comes in and nobody bothers to read it before i go to you

00:17:42.920 michael uh phil that's got to be demoralizing for the intelligence service oh i can i can guarantee i can

00:17:49.780 tell you that in spades brian i don't work you know i retired nine years ago from cesus but i still stay in

00:17:53.980 contact with a lot of my former colleagues and the morale is in the toilet for that very reason so

00:17:58.960 you know you you know me remember the famous leaks from a year and a half ago to the globe mail

00:18:02.420 about the interference in the elections now i have no idea who released the information the assumption

00:18:06.780 is it was cesus not necessarily it could be in a client who really who released the information we

00:18:10.980 don't know we don't have the answer to that yet but if it were a cesus employee i do not support it

00:18:15.360 because i don't support the release of secret intelligence into the media but i certainly understand

00:18:19.300 the frustration so imagine that you go to work every day with one thing and one thing in mind

00:18:24.120 only to do the best job you can to collect intelligence and information make sure it's it's

00:18:29.220 true so you confirm your sources you know are they reliable or not and you inform the government of what

00:18:34.260 you know to keep canada safe and and to you know help us prosper and you realize when you go home at

00:18:39.420 night that no one gives a rat's posterior about what you've just told them because it's inconvenient

00:18:44.040 it's going to interfere with our economic relations it's going to make people feel bad

00:18:47.560 you know the old canadian thing i'm sorry i'm if i'm offending you kind of thing what do you think

00:18:51.760 that does to morale what do you think it does to people who are really putting you know their

00:18:55.920 their honest effort recruiting sources running investigations getting court warrants to intercept

00:19:00.800 communications doing you know physical surveillance to provide the best story possible so that we

00:19:06.100 understand what people are doing here that is against our interest and you realize that nobody is

00:19:10.580 paying any attention to it yeah it's having a huge impact on morale and i feel sorry for my former

00:19:14.600 colleagues as a consequence michael um your thoughts on how and why the government didn't act sooner

00:19:21.980 you know beyond hiding everything they seem to have known for a long time that they should be asking

00:19:28.520 questions or putting in um guards to to keep especially more key than chang but both of them from being able to

00:19:38.440 share information send information i mean at one point um in the documents we find out that they brought

00:19:46.200 in people from the people's liberation army of china from one of their universities that deals with

00:19:51.520 bio weapons yeah and gave them full access to everything yeah so two questions uh pop up for me

00:19:59.720 in this whole saga about how the lab was not being protected by uh you know the management within the

00:20:08.200 the government of canada the first is why did it take so long to detect the clandestine and corrupt

00:20:16.760 and covert behavior of dr dr q as you call our dr dr chu some people pronounce it differently um

00:20:25.160 and dr chang right why did it take two years uh for that to be discovered as you pointed out

00:20:32.680 brian the first red flag goes up at least the red first red flag we read in the documents

00:20:38.200 that we finally got uh first red flag goes up in september 2018 that red flag is a departmental

00:20:44.760 security officer within the public health agency of canada discovering that dr chu uh the head of the

00:20:51.540 lab had registered a patent in china which is a big no-no which is in contravention of government

00:20:59.140 policy all intellectual property produced by government scientists are to be registered in

00:21:04.660 canada because canadian taxpayers have paid for it and so government rules are clear she registered a

00:21:10.420 patent in china this first gets detected in september 2018 so the first question is prior to that for two

00:21:18.260 years she had taken in 2017 and 2018 she had gone to the people's republic of china five times uh

00:21:27.140 uh often for two or more weeks at a time and during those five trips she did a number of things that

00:21:34.660 were clandestine and covert and corrupt she had her travel within china paid for by the people's republic

00:21:41.380 of china and by the people's liberation army she met with entities and scientists there uh covertly without

00:21:50.580 telling uh without getting approval from her uh from management in the government of canada

00:21:56.660 uh and this happened in 2017 2018 doesn't get detected for several years until 2019 so the first

00:22:06.180 question is why did it take so long for red flags to go up about this covert clandestine and corrupt

00:22:12.740 behavior i'm part of these this scientist the second question that pops up for me is once the red flag

00:22:19.620 is raised on this by the departmental security officer about the registered patent in china

00:22:25.460 in september 2018 why did it take 10 months to secure the winnipeg lab in fact in the in the first

00:22:34.980 six months of 2019 the she had access to the lab during those six month period uh government i.t 0.99

00:22:45.380 employees seized the computer that she was using there and carted off she also at the time applied for another 0.98

00:22:52.180 trip to china and was denied approval for that that additional trip and so these two things happened

00:22:58.420 in the first six months of 2019 yet she's not um she's not denied access to the lab she's not marched

00:23:04.660 out of the lab the lab isn't secured until july 5th of 2019 so why did it take 10 months to secure the

00:23:13.860 lab it should have happened a lot earlier if if your employer is seizing your hard drive

00:23:18.660 and your computer to analyze it presumably they should be locking you out of the premises as

00:23:24.900 well at that point and not waiting for several more months to pass before doing that that's that's

00:23:29.700 when you do the suspended with pay stay home while we look into this that's right and that didn't happen

00:23:35.300 actually till july 5th 2019 um so these are the questions that we hope to examine um at a parliamentary

00:23:43.060 committee when whenever uh we can get the agreement of uh you know the liberals and the ndp on this

00:23:50.100 has anybody been able to ask or or is it just now with the documents that you can get to these

00:23:55.060 sort of questions have you been able to ask p hack or health canada why they didn't act sooner no we

00:24:04.020 haven't uh because i tried to have this study that the access to information privacy and ethics committee

00:24:11.540 about a week ago uh but the new democrats teamed up with the liberals to shut that study down um so

00:24:18.980 we're going to try to do this at the canada china committee um you know we think that's another

00:24:25.700 committee that would be appropriate to study this and so hopefully we get the agreement of the ndp and

00:24:30.580 the liberals to conduct the study to hear from witnesses we these documents are just a start we need

00:24:35.380 to ask some serious questions about what happened so that we can hold we can issue a report with

00:24:42.500 recommendations to the government to hold it accountable like for example minister mark holland

00:24:47.140 has said after these documents were released uh several weeks ago that it wasn't him or his cabinet

00:24:54.500 colleagues that denied uh us these documents three years ago he blamed the civil servants in in the

00:25:01.540 public health agency of canada for over classifying the documents and refusing to release them so

00:25:07.140 we are going to call these these bureaucrats these civil servants in front of committee to say

00:25:11.620 why did you deny us the documents three years ago uh the minister said that you you are responsible

00:25:17.700 for releasing the documents and clearly three judges and four mps said you over classified them

00:25:22.820 you refuse to release them inappropriately to cover up embarrassment rather than protect national

00:25:27.300 security so we want to get to the bottom of why that release of information isn't happening

00:25:32.660 uh when parliament demands it i i did love the fact that the the government that that took the speaker

00:25:37.700 to court that uh you know um ignored four orders of parliament suddenly decided to blame the bureaucrats

00:25:45.060 um i is a is a former long-time resident of ottawa let me tell you this will not help them come

00:25:52.180 election time um civil servants remember when governments blame them and that and punish them

00:25:58.420 accordingly hey brian you work in a in a difficult business where you know there's accountability and

00:26:04.740 and the bottom line is always front and center well minister mark holland has also said that no one

00:26:10.260 in the public health agency of canada or in the winnipeg lab is going to be held accountable and

00:26:14.660 terminated for these serious national security breaches and i also find that appalling somebody needs

00:26:20.260 to be held accountable here we cannot have you know a government that commits this kind of egregious

00:26:27.140 breach of our national security that allows people's liberation army scientists into the lab

00:26:33.380 allows uh materials and information sensitive information be transferred to the government and

00:26:39.860 the military the people's republic of china and not have somebody be held accountable for this and if

00:26:44.740 it's not going to be a civil servant that's held accountable then the minister should do the honorable

00:26:49.220 thing and be held accountable it gets worse guys the minister also said recently that we are not going

00:26:53.940 to stop collaboration with the people's republic of china in the level four lab we'll just give them 0.98

00:26:58.900 access to lower level files than the most dangerous stuff and i'm thinking wait now um you just had an

00:27:04.500 egregious breach of very very sensitive dangerous technology wouldn't a prudent approach be we're going to

00:27:10.420 suspend all collaboration with the people's republic of china until we get to the bottom of this to see if

00:27:15.540 there aren't other scientists that are linked to the pla or the ccp and yet no you being good canadians

00:27:20.820 we don't want to i guess piss the chinese off so we're going to let them you know wander around the 0.99

00:27:25.140 lab a little bit more and see what else they can pick up okay hold those dodge gents because i want 1.00

00:27:29.140 to talk about that more when we come back we've got to take a quick break and i want to talk about that

00:27:33.140 but also claims of a link to the wuhan institute of virology and the study of that coronaviruses

00:27:40.420 we'll talk about all of that when we come back

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00:29:40.260 responsibly when the government was hiding a lot of information on the winnipeg lab documents and what

00:29:46.900 happened what really went down it led to a lot of speculation the government wanted to call them

00:29:51.860 conspiracy theories but in the absence of legitimate information in the absence of them correcting the

00:29:57.300 record of course people are going to wonder one of the things many people wondered was did the winnipeg

00:30:02.900 lab and its association with the wuhan institute of virology have anything to do with coronavirus

00:30:10.980 covid 19 the lab leak theory and of course we have found out in the documents that uh dr he or dr chu as

00:30:19.140 michael has correctly uh told me the name is pronounced uh that she did work with the wuhan institute of

00:30:26.500 virology does that raise alarm bells for either one of you gentlemen that she was working not only with

00:30:32.980 the wuhan institute of virology but with bat woman the the woman who's famous for going into the the

00:30:41.140 caves of southeast asia to look for bats and in bat viruses i i think for me that you know this what

00:30:48.900 this whole story suggests is that when you deal with a government like the prc um okay i understand our

00:30:55.780 economic relations with china are important i understand there's jobs a lot of our exports go to china

00:31:01.460 etc etc i don't know what the trade balance is like between canada and china i'm guessing it's

00:31:05.060 in their favor but i'm not an economist what it suggests to me is that you've got to be really

00:31:10.100 really careful with whatever institute organization you deal with they are not a liberal secular

00:31:15.460 democracy like canada is they are they are not above board they do not put things in the public domain

00:31:20.900 like we do and so as a consequence whenever you try to enter into some relationship with a chinese 0.98

00:31:26.820 organization of whatever level um you should be naturally suspicious and that doesn't mean you're

00:31:31.780 anti you know anti-asian or anti-chinese it's doing due diligence and that you're dealing with a

00:31:36.820 government that is not an ally of ours um that is making threatening moves around the world and is

00:31:43.700 taking advantage of as you mentioned blackberry brian robbed his blind on on blackberry and nortel for

00:31:48.100 for years and years and years to me that's just a prudent way for government to act not to say hey you

00:31:53.220 you know here's the kitchen take what you want and uh you can pay on the way out if you want or not

00:31:57.700 it doesn't really matter and yet we don't seem to do that here in canada i think i think uh dr chu's

00:32:03.780 collaboration with the wuhan institute of virology is problematic in two areas uh first she covertly

00:32:11.620 uh and clandestinely transferred information and materials um to entities in the prc like the

00:32:19.780 institute of virology without the government of canada's knowledge i mean that's that's the first

00:32:24.180 problem i think the second problem is that uh she helped create this lab in the people's republic of 1.00

00:32:33.540 china the lab in winnipeg is what's called a level four uh lab it's the highest designation of a lab

00:32:43.460 in the world in canada we only have one it's the winnipeg national biology uh national uh microbiology

00:32:50.260 laboratory um it handles the world's these level four labs handle the world's most dangerous pathogens

00:32:56.420 and viruses like ebola like coronaviruses and the like uh the prc did not have a level four lab

00:33:04.500 until dr chu made several visits over there to help train up the scientists in this and establish that lab

00:33:13.460 as a level four lab and here what here's why that's a problem the state department uh in its cables

00:33:20.580 from its embassy in the u.s state department um in cables that received from its embassy in u.s embassy

00:33:27.300 in beijing uh revealed that the u.s government employees went down to visit the lab just to

00:33:34.100 you know as part of uh you know their their due diligence in the scientific community to

00:33:39.300 review the lab and to see whether or not it was abiding by the strict level four processes to

00:33:45.780 prevent a global pandemic from emerging because of an escape of a virus and what they found was

00:33:51.540 alarming they discovered that the lab had lax security procedures lax uh rules around how to handle

00:33:59.060 these viruses uh and as a result they wrote a cable back to the u.s government saying we are very

00:34:04.820 concerned about the lax standards at this lab it is a global health risk the way this lab is being run

00:34:11.060 and the fact that the lab was established in part by the training that dr chu from winnipeg provided

00:34:16.980 you know is a problem and so you know i think these are the two worrisome things

00:34:22.820 that connect winnipeg to wuhan now i'll finish by saying this u.s intelligence has made an overall

00:34:29.060 assessment that the likelihood that the pandemic emerged from the lab is low they believe that the

00:34:36.420 overwhelming balance of probability is that the virus from this pandemic emerged from the wild

00:34:43.300 somewhere in the people's republic of china uh but that it did not emerge from the lab that said

00:34:50.020 you know we can't discount the fact that you know this lab was handling dangerous viruses and

00:34:56.580 pathogens it was a security risk and that the head of the winnipeg lab had a big hand in establishing

00:35:03.140 this wuhan institute of virology as a level four lab so you know i think uh that just says to me that

00:35:09.700 you know we should be cutting off all collaboration between the winnipeg lab

00:35:13.860 and any entities in the prc until we can be assured that none of this kind of stuff is ever going to happen

00:35:21.380 again before we get into the the ongoing cooperation let me just ask you about one other

00:35:28.660 area that the dr chu collaborated and we mentioned it earlier but didn't really examine it

00:35:34.340 and that is this uh university affiliated with the people's liberation army and their lab that focuses on

00:35:43.620 bio weapons that is a complete red flag that should have had edit everything shut down

00:35:49.780 as soon as cesis or whichever intelligence agency alerted the government to it i mean it isn't working

00:35:58.100 with a group that focuses on developing bioweapons something we should be really worried about one of 0.94

00:36:02.980 our people doing phil 100 you know i i don't know i i'm very skeptical that we here in canada are

00:36:10.420 developing bioweapons it would seem to be against the nature of being canadian but the fact that we're

00:36:16.340 allowing a bunch of scientists to come in um who are you know citizens of a country that we know to

00:36:22.420 be developing these bioweapons and we're handing our technology over to them scot-free so they can 0.98

00:36:27.700 be used by their host countries to do this is abominable and i i just don't understand why you'd

00:36:33.540 want to do it as i said earlier that you know for the minister to say that we're going to keep working

00:36:37.620 with china irrespective of what they these two scientists did at the level four lab strikes me as

00:36:42.820 like like what what parallel universe are you living in where you think this is this is an okay

00:36:47.860 thing and yeah the door should have been slammed a long time ago as michael said as soon as cesis

00:36:53.460 cesis made its concerns and by the way cesis did state quite clearly that one of the scientists was

00:36:58.620 being very evasive in her answers she in other words she lied i've been you know i've had my security

00:37:04.040 clearance many years and you get all these interviews and stuff and they can tell when you're telling a

00:37:07.960 line when you're not most of the times for that to be dismissed and not taken seriously to me is

00:37:14.180 again one more example of what else do you want your security services do they're telling you

00:37:18.840 this person is a is a risk to national security and public safety what more do you want us to tell

00:37:24.720 you in order for you to take action on a on a file of this regard yeah i i agree with that brian

00:37:29.580 look here here's here are the facts seven government scientists at the winnipeg lab

00:37:34.880 collaborated on research with scientists in the prc in the people's republic of china on some of the

00:37:42.340 world's most dangerous viruses and pathogens that's a fact that research is publicly available and it

00:37:49.180 shows that that research took place between the winnipeg lab and these prc scientists six studies

00:37:55.980 were co-authored at least six studies were co-authored from 2016 to 2020 between the winnipeg

00:38:02.700 scientists and the ones in the prc some of the those studies were scientists in the prc who were

00:38:10.180 members of the people's liberation army and as you pointed out in your earlier remarks they were not

00:38:16.760 only members of the people's liberation army they were members of a unit of the people's liberation

00:38:21.500 army called the academy of military medical sciences that has a mandate to develop defensive and

00:38:28.840 offensive bioweapons and so the fact that this collaboration took place without the government

00:38:35.780 shutting down that collaboration is appalling and now the fact that the government is refusing to shut

00:38:42.360 it down all of it down now is even more appalling it should be shut down entirely any collaboration

00:38:48.740 in order to ensure that we've got the proper procedures in place the proper security in place

00:38:55.040 to ensure that this kind of stuff never happens again the argument from the government has been

00:39:00.800 in the past well you know it as we saw in the pandemic if a virus gets out it becomes a global

00:39:10.560 worldwide problem and so we have to work with these other organizations we have to work with these

00:39:16.640 other countries and i can understand that to a degree but when the other country is continually

00:39:24.440 violating uh violating uh intelligence rules regularly interfering in your country regularly

00:39:31.700 doing things like trying to develop offensive and defensive bioweapons something that canadians 0.81

00:39:37.640 would abhor that's when you should cut it off it michael is it you know from the political side is this

00:39:45.900 just being afraid of is phil put it pissing off the chinese is this afraid to to stand up to to 0.83

00:39:54.000 beijing or are they just naive brian i think it's two things i think they're naive in the extreme

00:39:59.320 uh the government the the liberal government the trudeau government but i also think there's an element

00:40:04.720 of you know this this kind of dogma that uh basic discovery-led scientific research should have

00:40:12.760 no restrictions on it um none whatsoever and that you know this basic discovery-led research should trump

00:40:19.680 national security should trump uh canada's defense and security interests and i completely disagree with

00:40:25.180 that at the end of the day uh the government of canada has the right to say that our national

00:40:30.760 security supersedes the funding of basic research at our universities and at government laboratories

00:40:37.860 and because we have a primary responsibility as a government to protect the safety and security of

00:40:43.400 canadians and no you can't collaborate with the people's liberation army you can't collaborate with

00:40:49.680 the academy of medical uh military sciences military medical sciences i should say in the people's

00:40:56.740 republic of china because they are doing gain-of-function research to weaponize uh civilian research to

00:41:02.940 to take this basic university and and government research and to turn it into military bioweapons 0.52

00:41:09.420 and so no you're not you don't have the academic freedom to collaborate in that way and we're going

00:41:14.320 to shut that down and i think that is a responsibility the government of canada needs to take and they

00:41:18.780 need to get off their this kind of weird ideology they have that basic science trumps defense and

00:41:26.200 security it doesn't our defense and security is the most important thing that a government the

00:41:31.460 federal government has to do to protect the safety and security of canadians when you work in

00:41:36.060 intelligence you you deal with a lot of different actors a lot of different countries and so sometimes

00:41:43.380 you you're forced to because of the nature of the threat to deal with countries that let's just say

00:41:48.760 don't share the same values that you do and i'll go back to the you know the post 9-11 period in

00:41:53.820 counterterrorism where i worked we were talking to some countries that normally you you wouldn't but you

00:41:59.160 really had no choice because the threat was what it was but there's a reason why and you've probably all

00:42:04.860 heard of the term the five eyes the anglo partners which is sort of the bedrock of intelligence here

00:42:09.180 in canada it's been around since the second world war there's a reason why you share more with the

00:42:14.180 five eyes and i would extend that based on my time it ceases to a lot of western european partners as

00:42:19.420 well they're not part of the five eyes because we all share the same basic values and ethics china is

00:42:25.240 not part of the five eyes china is not part of the western world and so for us as michael said to say

00:42:30.740 well you know academic freedom is more important national security like hell it is and you know we

00:42:37.100 don't have to work with china on these these bio issues we have other partners with which we can

00:42:42.500 work like the america like the brits like the other western european partners and to me that's a safer bet

00:42:48.560 look there's no guarantees in intelligence that information that you share once it you know leaves

00:42:54.240 your borders or can be compromised that's just the nature of the business but you you go you go home

00:42:59.100 one night a little more confident if you shared with the americans the brits and i don't know the

00:43:03.700 swedes than if you shared with the russians or the chinese let's just put it that way and the fact that

00:43:08.660 the government doesn't seem to get this is a very very worrisome development as far as i'm concerned

00:43:12.780 i can't remember if it was on the winnipeg lab side of things or on the election interference

00:43:18.960 but at one point as one of the stories came out jerry butts the you know long ago former

00:43:26.320 principal secretary to prime minister trudeau said when bob fife and steve chase the globe and mail

00:43:34.000 see someone having dim sum they now think it's foreign interference and i thought wow that really

00:43:41.920 does show the mentality it that that they want to diminish everything to not offending china but no

00:43:53.080 it's the people's republic of china it's the dictators in beijing it's the people's liberation army

00:43:57.360 there there is this right and i still think it is naivete on china um with this government we know

00:44:05.700 the trudeau family has been infatuated with uh with the prc going back to the 1950s um with all of them

00:44:14.580 visiting even outside of politics and fascinated with how they operate and and so they just don't seem to

00:44:22.220 want to put any guardrails or any controls over any of this and and and phil i really do think that

00:44:31.440 that opens us up to very uh worrisome national security threats it does and as i said earlier

00:44:41.100 a lot of us are getting sick and tired of saying that if cc has an investigation uh based on reasonable

00:44:47.260 grounds of suspect which is what the cc act says about chinese activities to be immediately labeled

00:44:53.140 by the government as being anti-asian racist is i'm really getting tired of that and you talk about

00:44:58.440 national security brian the other thing that needs to be mentioned here is that our closest allies are

00:45:03.280 looking at us very very um carefully right now and they're asking themselves if canada can't protect

00:45:10.340 very serious level four lab bio information that should not find its hands into the way of the pla and

00:45:16.520 the ccp what they can do with our information can we trust canada to to protect our most sensitive 0.99

00:45:23.020 intelligence those conversations are being had by the way i've got my sources telling me that that

00:45:27.460 you know people are really wondering if canada is a reliable part and when it comes to national

00:45:31.480 security and intelligence we've already seen ourselves uh um kept out of the the three eyes

00:45:38.320 on two different michael i've spoken to many uh politicians who've gone to the prc on visits and

00:45:47.980 i don't know if you have but the security warnings are extensive the use of burner phones um not taking

00:45:56.340 your usual laptop uh not accepting any thumb drives back when those were a big thing still

00:46:02.880 not accepting anything that could compromise i mean we we know that china is constantly trying to

00:46:09.380 gain information trying to interfere trying to exert influence so why on on this file

00:46:16.620 war on the election file it is this government unwilling to to act i have brian gone to china i was

00:46:25.320 accompanied uh prime minister harper on his official visits to uh the people's republic of china

00:46:30.860 and so i too was made aware of all these security risks that uh were were were that were over there

00:46:39.720 that could threaten us um why the current government has been slow to react is you know again i think

00:46:46.480 you're right it's it's a combination of naivete and other factors uh i think it's you know it like this

00:46:53.800 is a government that came to office very naive you know don't forget this is a government came to office

00:46:58.520 promising to uh broaden and deepen ties to re-establish diplomatic relations with the

00:47:05.280 islamic republic of iran and then did a 180 on that because they realized that the harper government

00:47:10.740 was correct in cutting off diplomatic relations with the regime i remember speaking to stefan dion in

00:47:16.300 scrums and he said that that your government had been ideological in in not talking to russia

00:47:23.080 or the islamic republic of iran that that's right and and as the government came to office

00:47:29.460 naively wanting to broaden and deepen ties with china when it was becoming clear in 2016 and 2017

00:47:36.000 that a new china had emerged under president xi and president xi was a president who was going to

00:47:43.260 not liberalize china and bring it closer into the rules-based democratic order that we

00:47:50.280 have that has assured the world's peace and security since the end of the second world war

00:47:54.560 but rather he was going to double down on autocracy and he was going to double down on the crackdowns on

00:47:59.740 the tech sector again you know on on minorities in china on threatening neighbors in the south china sea

00:48:05.080 and and and crackdowns in hong kong and so many other things that was clear by 2017 we were starting to

00:48:10.520 get evidence well you'll remember the famous press conference with minister dion where in canada a

00:48:16.820 journalist asked uh his chinese counterpart a question and got got basically chewed out uh in

00:48:24.360 front of uh minister dion uh you saw at the same time around 2017 the detention of western journalists

00:48:30.600 including journalists uh canadian journalists in the in the prc so by 2017 we know that a new china

00:48:37.720 is emerging an autocratic china that's going to throw its weight around and and threaten western 1.00

00:48:42.420 interests and western values and at that time the prime minister naively still believes that he's

00:48:48.160 going to establish a free trade agreement with china that he's going to broaden and deepen ties

00:48:52.680 with china um and and that all comes to naught uh and it isn't till 2020 or 2021 that the government

00:49:01.800 finally realizes that this the china's changed and that it's a threat to canada and it took them that 0.98

00:49:08.720 long to get to that realization our first vaccine for covet was supposed to be developed with china

00:49:15.360 now that that vaccine i think it was used the last i remember looking i don't think it even really made

00:49:20.860 it to market in china it was used experimentally on the military but that that was our response to

00:49:27.920 covet was to cooperate with people that we already knew were undermining and attacking us well and and

00:49:33.040 that can sino vaccine it actually uh it has a winnipeg connection dr chu worked with can sino uh and

00:49:43.900 collaborated with can sino and so that's another thing we need to find out of the committee was

00:49:49.500 the prc's decision not to allow for the export of some some uh trials samples of the virus uh during

00:49:59.920 the pandemic was that retaliation for the government securing the winnipeg lab and suspending dr chu and

00:50:05.780 dr cheng from the lab you know so again you know another example of why we need to find out more about

00:50:12.140 what happened my uh colleague terry glavin over a national post has written that the way the trudeau

00:50:18.040 government's handled this is just uh another example of their attempts to cover up china's influence and he

00:50:25.160 ties this into china's foreign interference and influence writ large be it industrial uh interfering

00:50:33.260 in the elections as you sit back and you look do either one of you have hope of anything good coming

00:50:39.040 out of the the foreign interference inquiry michael i know i might be putting you in a spot there

00:50:43.520 you're going to be speaking to it but we'll have the report we'll have the hearings and then

00:50:49.080 what you know phil i think back to you said you started under um pierre trudeau uh the sidewinder

00:50:56.860 report was the 1990s no 1980s and no late 1990s late 1990s nothing ever happened with that are are we

00:51:07.080 ever going to have a political culture in ottawa that takes this stuff seriously um my fear is the answer

00:51:13.920 is no and and i will uh answer your question with a question brian um we've had these several ticks

00:51:19.960 of the can over the use of the emergencies act against the so-called freedom convoy back in 2021

00:51:24.420 we have a government saying it's going to ignore the recommendations of of the of the court and it's

00:51:29.400 going to in fact appeal against the federal court ruling that the emergencies act was invoked

00:51:33.480 illegally which in fact it was because the emergencies act can only be invoked under a national

00:51:38.360 security as determined by cesis and cesis said there's no national emergency here so they did it

00:51:42.580 illegally if we have a government that you know plans inquiries i like to joke brian that you know

00:51:48.080 we have royal commissions in canada twice a week because it's kind of part of our dna um how many

00:51:52.920 royal commissions and inquiries have actually resulted in recommendations that have a been accepted

00:51:56.920 and b have been followed up on and actually implemented so uh no this inquiry is a waste of

00:52:02.020 taxpayers money and time it's unnecessary because if the government had listened to cesis intelligence 0.97

00:52:06.520 back in the as far back as 2008 brian then director dick fadden was called a racist by the

00:52:12.440 liberals and the ndps because he raised the possibility that china was interfering in our

00:52:16.300 affairs so no i had no confidence the inquiry will make any bit of difference it's all for show

00:52:20.820 and i don't think the recommendations if there are any will be followed up on and it just it's

00:52:25.960 just one more i think example of a government that fails at an intelligence culture michael last word to

00:52:31.160 you sure well i'm i'm going to reserve judgment on the inquiry until justice ho publishes a report

00:52:38.220 and that will um allow me to make a determination of whether or not you know the inquiry has served

00:52:44.720 a useful purpose but to you know to the broader point we should never have needed a public inquiry

00:52:51.460 just like we should never have needed this ad hoc committee of four mps and three judges

00:52:57.460 to determine whether or not the winnipeg lab documents should be released what this all should

00:53:02.920 have been done in a functioning parliament where committees like the committees of the uk parliament

00:53:08.820 like the committees of the u.s congress are able to hold the government accountable so we should

00:53:14.300 never have gotten to the point where we had to have a public inquiry to get to the bottom of this

00:53:19.020 of these foreign interference threats from china directed at our parliament directed our general

00:53:24.980 elections this this this accountability these inquiries this this investigation should have taken

00:53:30.840 place at a parliamentary committee i know the procedure i wholeheartedly agree and i only called

00:53:36.140 for a public inquiry in several columns because the government refused pmo was obviously in my view

00:53:42.920 interfering in the work of the committees and i know that the members all say they're independent but

00:53:48.040 you know you you could see as soon as pmo decided uh just like they did with snc lablin that things

00:53:54.780 were getting too hot liberal mps would change their mind on admitting more witnesses or

00:54:00.460 following up on questions having more meetings uh this is exactly what a functioning parliament should

00:54:06.860 be doing that's exactly right and you know to to phil's point uh these these inquiries take a lot of time and

00:54:15.640 they cost millions of dollars well that's what we have parliament for uh this winnipeg lab document

00:54:21.340 committee that was created sat outside parliament took a long time to come to determination and

00:54:27.520 here we are three years later and we finally got the documents this stuff should be happening in

00:54:32.040 parliament and its committees in a functioning parliament like we see in other democracies and so

00:54:37.100 you know it's a it's we're left with the last resort as you've pointed out of having to agree to the ad

00:54:42.740 hoc committee to release the documents of having to agree to a public inquiry to get to the bottom of

00:54:47.560 of interference in our elections because parliament isn't functioning the way it should and that is on the

00:54:53.760 government because this is a government that came to office promising to strengthen parliament to show

00:54:57.880 respect for parliament to provide parliament with information and they've done anything but in fact

00:55:02.280 just a week or two ago the information commissioner announced she's taking the government to court to get

00:55:08.060 documents released uh by the government so it's it's a government that's completely reneged on its

00:55:13.900 commitment to strengthen parliament and to show some respect for a democracy openness and transparency

00:55:19.160 i believe was their buzz phrase at the beginning open by default it hasn't worked out that way

00:55:25.600 michael john phil gursky thank you both so very much for your time today thank you brian thank you

00:55:31.100 let us know what you think drop us a line and email me be lily at postmedia.com you can find me on

00:55:36.480 social media uh drop a comment below if you're able to wherever you're listening to or watching this

00:55:41.820 podcast full comment is a post media podcast my name is brian lily your host this episode was

00:55:47.620 produced by andre prue with theme music by bryce hall kevin liban is the executive producer you can

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00:55:59.360 out by giving us a rating or leaving a review and tell your friends about us thanks for listening

00:56:04.660 until next time i'm brian lily

Full Comment - March 18, 2024

Liberals cry 'racism' to cover up another Chinese interference scandal

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