At the heart of the debacle is the issue of accountability. What role has our country played in building China’s dangerous biological capacity to potentially hold the world hostage?

In the wake of the long-awaited release of declassified CSIS intelligence records on the firing of two scientists at Winnipeg’s National Microbiology Laboratory, award-winning investigative journalist and author, Sam Cooper of The Bureau, joins Jason James, host of the Brave New Normal podcast, to rake over the bombshell document.

It must be acknowledged that no one has pursued the story of Canada’s national security/biosecurity debacle with as much tenacity as Sam Cooper, who is widely recognized for his hard-hitting work on Chinese political interference in Canada, in addition to his efforts to expose organized crime rooted in a large diaspora from Hong Kong based in Vancouver.

Following the release of more than 600 pages of Canadian Security Intelligence Service documents on Feb. 28, the country learned how Xiangguo Qiu, a world-renowned microbiologist, and her colleague and husband, Keding Cheng, facilitated the transfer of secret scientific information to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China from Canada’s highest security lab more than three years ago. The WIV is, of course, the lab at the center of suspicions about the onset in 2019 of the global coronavirus pandemic.

Many questions remain. How was this transfer of knowledge, capacity, and biological materials used by the Wuhan lab, which has the capacity for bioweapon and gain-of-function research? In March 2019, the Winnipeg lab shipped 15 strains of Nipah and Ebolas viruses to Wuhan, facilitated through Ms. Qiu. The CSIS documents also show that Ms. Qiu sent antibodies and other material to China without prior approval, and that she had collaborated on projects with the highest-level of Chinese military bioweapon research.

The CSIS investigation further revealed that Ms. Qiu had provided at least two employees of Chinese government institutions access to the Winnipeg microbiology laboratory.

How did this extraordinary breach of security happen, why did this happen in Canada, and what role has our country played in building China’s dangerous biological capacity to potentially hold the world hostage?

According to Sam Cooper, it starts at the top.

Tune into the conversation between Sam and Jason here. A full transcript of the discussion is also available from the website.