A band of kleptocrats:
A federal agency whose president boasted to MPs of “the highest standard” on ethics has failed an internal audit. Irregularities in contracting at the National Research Council included favouritism, missing paperwork, inside dealing and poor oversight: “Millions of Canadians are skeptical when they hear senior civil servants uttering words like, ‘trust us.'”
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Investigators have confirmed whistleblowers’ complaints of “misuse of public funds” through sweetheart contracting in Defence Minister Bill Blair’s department. It follows a 2022 audit that documented inside dealing and favouritism: ‘The process was tainted.’
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Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault will testify on why he attended a secret meeting with New Democrats and Liberals to discuss rewriting the Elections Act. Perrault’s office said he considered it routine though it included a proposal guaranteeing pension eligibility for 28 New Democrat and Liberal MPs: “Didn’t you find it unusual?”**
Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet said the Senate’s latest attempt to gut his party’s bill to protect supply management from being subject to future trade concessions is a “stab in the back” of Canadian dairy, poultry and egg farmers.
Blanchet was reacting to an amendment passed Wednesday by the Senate committee on foreign affairs that made it so the terms of Bill C-282 would not apply to existing agreements, deals that were being renegotiated or ones currently under negotiation.
Blanchet said the change effectively kills the intent of the bill and urged members of the upper chamber to reject the amendment given the results of this week’s U.S. election.
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On Friday, Kusie (Calgary Midnapore) said Guilbeault invested $254 million into a company he owns.
“This government is failing to comply with parliament and hand over the documents pertaining to this potentially corrupt activity,” said Kusie in a social media post.
“Canadians deserve answers and accountability from this scandal plagued Liberal government. When will they hand the documents over to the RCMP?”
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Was the the fact that you supported an unpopular government to save your Rolex-wearing leader's pension?
Support for federal New Democrats in B.C. and the Prairies is dropping at a “concerning” rate for leader Jagmeet Singh, a new poll suggests, despite recent gains by his provincial counterparts in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
The Postmedia-Leger poll finds that the NDP’s popularity has dropped two percentage points nationally, to 15 per cent, since the last poll on Sept. 30.
Ask Justin to run to your aid.
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Canadian public health authorities didn’t have to let the Wuhan Institute of Virology infiltrate and co-opt our country’s highest-security biolab. The warning signs had been there for years, and no one to our knowledge was holding a gun to the heads of the rubber-stampers who authorized a security-threat-flagged scientist’s shipment of live Ebola back to the motherland.
That’s part of why the latest report from the House of Commons committee on China, released Tuesday (conveniently, on the day of the American presidential election), is such a puzzling read. Though a lot of the information contained within has previously trickled into public knowledge, through reporting, committee hearings and released records, the Commons committee’s synthesis shows how Canadian authorities reacted with the haste of a slug — and continue to leave gaping holes in the security of research that can literally be weaponized against human health.
The report sets out a comedy of errors that preceded the 2019 expulsion of scientists Dr. Xiangguo Qiu and Keding Cheng, both Canadian citizens from China working at the Winnipeg National Microbiology Lab, who were ousted for “administrative” reasons.
The husband-wife pair was hired back in 2003 and 2006, respectively, but a decade later began showing suspicious links to Chinese research programs. In 2012, wife Qiu began collaborating with a Chinese military virologist specializing in “bio-defence and bio-terrorism.”
In 2016, she was nominated by a Chinese military official for an “International Cooperation Award,” which nodded to her work with the military bioweapons expert and stated that she “used Canada’s Level 4 Biosecurity Laboratory as a base to assist China to improve its capability to fight highly pathogenic pathogens … and achieved brilliant results.” She published a paper with military-linked colleagues sometime afterward, and became a visiting professor at the Academy of Military Medical Sciences working on infectious disease — a position that she left out of her English CV.
In 2017, PHAC greenlit Qiu to travel to Beijing for a conference — but from there, unbeknownst to PHAC, she travelled to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to present on Ebola vaccines. Later that year, PHAC approved Qiu to train others at the Wuhan lab. Around this time or later, via the Wuhan lab, she applied for the Chinese government’s Thousand Talents Program which incentivizes members to clandestinely send overseas research back to China.
After Qiu signed up, the suspicious activity accelerated. In February 2018, she brought over an employee from the Wuhan lab to join her at the Winnipeg lab. In April, she returned to China to “visit family,” with travel expenses paid for by a Chinese biotech firm. In May, Cheung received protein samples from China labelled “kitchen utensils.”
In April 2018, Qiu and Cheung were finally flagged as possible insider threats after CSIS briefed PHAC on foreign interference.
The warning made its way up the chain at a snail’s pace: PHAC’s national security found a suspicious Chinese patent including Qiu in September; the PHAC president was briefed in December, and ordered a private firm to investigate. The private firm tasked with the job concluded in March 2019 that more investigations were needed (duh). PHAC leadership contemplated an internal investigation and finally called the RCMP in May. CSIS began investigations in June.
In July, the scientists were finally kicked out of the lab.
During the entire time that authorities were groggily waking up to the idea that these top scientists might be working as agents for a foreign government, the scientists accelerated their pace. Qiu flew back to the Wuhan lab — with PHAC’s approval — where she was now a “visiting research scientist.” Qiu’s staff recruit from Wuhun was caught trying to sneak tubes out of the Winnipeg lab. The Winnipeg security began noticing a suspicious number of visitors walking around the lab unattended. Cheng tried to enter the lab with another employee’s passcode. Qiu shipped a live sample of Ebola back to the Wuhan lab — again, with PHAC’s approval.
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Is this true?:
#BREAKING: Sam Cooper, the investigative journalist who revealed China's election interference in federal elections, says there was "significant CCP-affiliated Election Interference in support of Premier David Eby," the NDP premier of BC who narrowly won re-election last month. pic.twitter.com/OVON9kI0xP
— Canada Proud (@WeAreCanProud) November 8, 2024
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