Tories rejoin Parliament's national security committee

The federal Conservatives are ending their boycott of a special national security and intelligence committee made up of MPs and senators.

Interim Conservative leader Candice Bergen announced the reversal on Tuesday, saying she was writing to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to have Tory MPs Michelle Rempel Garner and Rob Morrison appointed to the committee.

"I believe it’s important for Conservatives to have a voice and presence on the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) during these historic times," Bergen said in a statement.

Bergen also moved to shake up the official Opposition’s critic portfolios, with former cabinet minister Ed Fast taking over as the Conservatives’ point person on finance after Pierre Poilievre stepped down to run for the party leadership.

The decision to end the NSICOP boycott comes two months after then−Conservative leader Erin O’Toole said Conservatives were boycotting the all−party committee, which was created in 2017 to review sensitive matters.

O’Toole said the boycott was to protest the Liberal government’s refusal to hand over unredacted documents related to the firing of two scientists from Canada’s highest security laboratory in Winnipeg.

Bergen on Tuesday said Conservatives would continue "demanding answers and documents related to the national microbiology lab in Winnipeg," while also pushing to make the committee more accountable to Parliament.

Opposition parties banded together last spring to order the Public Health Agency of Canada to hand over the documents to the now−defunct special committee on Canada−China relations.

The Liberal government gave them to NSICOP instead, arguing that it was the more appropriate body to review sensitive material that could jeopardize national security.

That committee submits classified reports to the prime minister, which are later tabled in Parliament in edited form. Its members must have top security clearance and are bound to secrecy.

At the time, House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota ruled that NSICOP is not a committee of Parliament and, therefore, not an acceptable alternative to having a Commons committee examine the documents.

In a December letter, O’Toole alleged NSICOP had “become a committee of the Prime Minister’s Office” and has been used by Trudeau’s government “to avoid accountability and that is diminishing its credibility.”

He said changes were required to the legislation creating the committee to establish it as a standing Commons committee that reports to Parliament, not the prime minister.

PHAC has said the matter of the scientists’ firing is related to “a possible breach of security protocols” and is under police investigation.

The opposition believes the documents they’ve demanded will show why Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng were escorted out of Winnipeg’s National Microbiology Laboratory in July 2019 and subsequently fired in January 2021.

They also want to see documents related to the transfer, overseen by Qiu, of deadly Ebola and Henipah viruses to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology in March 2019.

Former PHAC president Iain Stewart had assured MPs the transfer had nothing to do with the subsequent firings of Qiu and her husband and that there was no connection to COVID−19, which first appeared in China’s Wuhan province.

Opposition parties continue to suspect a link despite those assurances.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 22, 2022.