Article by Francesco Veronesi — Translation and Video: CNMNG Staff

Anthony Rota challenges Justin Trudeau. The battleground is the controversial story surrounding the firing of two virologists of Chinese origin from the National Microbiology Laboratory, a maximum-security laboratory in Winnipeg where lethal viruses such as Ebola are studied. This tug-of-war, which has been developing for several weeks, has gone a bit under the radar in recent days, but in the near future, it risks leading to a serious institutional crisis between the legislative and executive powers here in Canada.

The Speaker of the House has repeatedly asked the government, during his speeches at the House of Commons, to deliver the documentation relating to the dismissal of the two scientists, Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Chen.

The prime minister, for his part, tried to make a wall, in the face of pressure from the Speaker of the House supported in this case by all the opposition parties, thus deciding to send the required documentation to the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, a parliamentary commission whose members, given the importance of the sensitive data and issues discussed, are required to respect secrecy.