The couple were abruptly removed from the lab in 2019, and their dismissal was kept quiet for two years. In 2021, though, only the mere fact of their removal was revealed—not the reason for it.
But now we know why they were fired. The couple were working in secret with the now-infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology, feeding classified information to the Chinese government. It isn’t yet clear how bad the damage is to our country, or whether we know the full measure of it. Nor do I think we know how extensive the espionage really was. CSIS became increasingly worried as time passed, but its warnings weren’t heeded. And as far as I know, there haven’t been any consequences either for the spies themselves or for the Chinese government.
As if this all weren’t bad enough, recent revelations took far too long to appear. A heavily redacted report by the Public Health Agency of Canada appeared in 2021, but it seemed to cover up most of the story. The government then fought every effort to have all relevant documents released. In fact, the government refused to release the full CSIS dossier on the dubious ground that to do so would harm national security. Opposition parties voted to declare the government in contempt of Parliament, and the government responded with the bizarre move of taking the Speaker of the House of Commons to court in order to ensure that he wouldn’t release the relevant documents.
Then an election was called, and the case was abandoned. Nothing about this seems right. And one wonders whether the last election was basically a stall tactic to avoid government embarrassment? One can only speculate.
Our governing class still seems to live in an end-of-history fantasy in which it cannot even imagine that there are real threats in the world. Our elites don’t seem to be able to recognize even the conceptual difference between friends and enemies. But there genuinely are people and countries who do not wish us and our allies well, and who seek to undermine and exploit us from within. Canada seems to have been unusually gullible in this regard, and we have left ourselves open to all manner of nefarious behaviour.
Our government must take national security more seriously. Malefactors must face severe consequences. And we absolutely must fund and equip our military just as we did at the height of the last Cold War. Unless we clean up our act, our allies will not take us seriously and will be continue to exclude us from new security partnerships. We were notably left out of AUKUS. the trilateral military agreement in the Indo-Pacific involving the USA, Great Britain, and Australia, despite our lengthy Pacific coastline. We can expect more of the same treatment if we remain lax and naive.
But the worst consequence of our insouciance about national security may well be domestic. If we continue in the present mode, we will only further degrade Canadians’ trust in our political classes and our institutions. It would not be hard to form the depressing conclusion that our government just can’t be bothered to protect us and stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies. The worst outcome may not be foreign meddling, so much as the perception that a feckless Canadian elite may actually sympathize with our foreign enemies.
It is high time we acted like a serious country again.
