Two years ago, two Chinese scientists were fired and escorted out of Winnipeg’s National Microbiology lab. The Public Agency of Health of Canada cited possible breaches in security protocols as the reason for the actions they took. And those firings have sparked months of debate and resulted with the Conservative party withdrawing all their members from a national security committee. MLI Senior Fellow Christian Leuprecht joined Shaye Ganam to discuss the controversy and national security implications of the firing of the two scientists.
“I had long suspected and speculated publicly that this was an espionage operation,” says Leuprecht. “The broader concern is that they [the scientists] could have wanted to get domain awareness of what the Canadian lab is capable of, what we’re working on and what we’re working on with our allies.”