MP Tom Kmiec filed an Access to Information request that revealed a secret government payout to a Chinese vaccine company, and raises many questions about the Liberal government’s handling of COVID-19..Calgary Shepard MP Tom Kmiec and his office recently filed an Access to Information request that unearthed some alarming information about a contracts between the National Research Council and a Chinese biological company called CanSino..Kmiec describes the discovery as beginning with the National Research Council (NRC), a government agency responsible for putting out grants and conducting research. The NRC was delegated during the pandemic to do research on COVID-19 vaccinations..Kmiec said “… the contract I got was one that was signed between the NRC and CanSino Biologics.” He went on to say CanSino “… has a very close connection to the central commission in Beijing, which is the government there. So basically they [the NRC] paid them a contract and … it said there was a non-refundable, non-creditable nominal fee, which basically means it’s an upfront cash transfer from the NRC to CanSino to do research..“So CanSino would then bear the costs of the lab work, paying all the scientists, doing all this stuff. It’s basically a signed contract to do the COVID-19 vaccine research and procurement in it, and that’s what that contract was all about.”.Kmiec also provides access for the public to view the contract to make a decision for themselves..“I made the whole AtI public so the whole contract is public. There’s a few redacted components, mainly – primarily – the actual moneys that were transferred. It’s available if you click on my Facebook page, publicly available to anyone..“It’s section 10 through 14 of the contract – one that says the NRC will pay the collaborator, which is the company – this non-refundable, non-creditable material transfer that they have an estimate of how much it will be..“Then when you continue, they also agree to a performance of work and they’ve attached something called a statement of work and deliverables. This is the explanation of what this contract is all about, and they’ve also attached a general conditions clause,” said Kmiec..“Now, I’ve seen in the news some people reached out to the minister’s office like other journalists have asked, and the response they got there was, ‘Well, we never transferred any actual cash ’cause the deal fell apart so quickly.’.“That doesn’t make any sense to me. If the government signed a deal, and just didn’t transfer the money, that seems like a very weird thing to do. And if the deal did fall apart they still signed an agreement, they were still going to pay them out a huge sum of money.”.Kmiec said although the Access to Information filing redacted the actual dollar amount that was paid to CanSino, the black square over top of it was very long – indicating a payment estimated to be in the millions..“You can also tell that it is a huge sum of money just based on how big the blackout area is. They can’t modify the original document, when they provided an AtI, so it has to be … in the millions because that would be a sufficient amount of zeros if they’re using the two decimal points after the four pennies. I think it’s in the billions just based on how big the space is.”.Liberal MP’s, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, have consistently denied not only the amount of money paid to CanSino but the entire contract itself..On May 12 2021 when asked by Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole in the House about why the government chose to give the contract to CanSino, Trudeau replied “That is simply not true, we signed seven vaccine contracts with vaccine makers from around the world and not one of them was from China.”.Trudeau’s sentiments were echoed by Liberal MP Sonia Sidhu in a Commons health committee meeting on June 11 saying “…that is not correct, we need to clarify there’s never been a contract between CanSino and the Government of Canada.”.Yet another Liberal MP, William Amos, told the same committee Feb. 18 2021 “… on the issue of CanSino, there is a false narrative being pedlled that Canada somehow put all its eggs in the CanSino basket.”.Iain Stewart, Research Council president at the time, announced on May 12 2020 that CanSino’s vaccine “…holds great promise,” and was “…one of only a handful of vaccine candidates in the world against COVID-19.”.Stewart also initially said the agency was “proud of our ongoing relationship with CanSino Biologics,” but later refused to answer MP’s questions about the contract at a Feb. 2 2021 hearing of the Commons industry committee..Kmiec said: “The Liberals lied at the beginning because they said they made no such agreement, that they didn’t transfer any cash, it turns out it’s true, I guess. They’re saying its true that they didn’t transfer any money, but they did sign an agreement and they were very very insistent that they had not at the beginning.”.Kmiec also cites this contract as an indication to the Liberals’ overall handling of pandemic provisions since the beginning of COVID-19..“They still botched the response to the pandemic from the very beginning by trying to get this deal signed with CanSino. They can’t pretend that the National Resource Council was doing this on its own – they were being directed by the government.”.“They claim they have no agreement. Now, there is an agreement in their own files, and now they’re still pretending they didn’t transfer the money. I simply don’t believe them.”.Kmiec speculated on how this was allowed to happen like this, saying:.“I think part of it is during a pandemic it’s easy to make really declaratory statements – either something is true a 100 % or false a 100 % – and I think they took a lot of political heat for their very close ties and almost an affinity to China..“I think that’s why they’re so aggressively pushing back against the claim that there was no contract, there was no money transferred. It’s because I think they’re worried the public has kind of realized that you cannot deal with an authoritarian government like the one in Beijing honestly..“Because they’re not honest with us, they’ve been holding two of our citizens – (and) many others – but two very prominent citizens, now the two Michael’s, for well over a thousand days now I think.”.Kmiec echoed the belief of many that the Trudeau administration has trust in the Chinese government, and cites their apathy in foreign policy concerning China..“The government has shown an immense weakness on anything related to the government in Beijing. If you tie in also the Uighurs genocide motion that was passed in the House of Commons the government … they just sent their foreign affairs minister to say he was abstaining on behalf of the government.”.Speculating on why the Liberal government has so adamantly denied the existence of the contract and the payout, Kmiec said “… again, that’s not leadership, that’s just such weakness in the face of an authoritarian government..“Then when it comes to things like this, when they do talk tough around the government in Beijing and pushing back, and then secretly you’re signing this agreement they then profusely have to deny..“I think it’s because they know they take a public hit in their polling and I think that’s all they ever look at. This doesn’t poll well, and therefore it’s best to just deny as harshly, and make a declaratory statement that’s absolutely false.”.According to Kmiec this isn’t the first time the Liberals have attempted something like this. “I’m used to this, this isn’t the first time they said something that turned out to be completely untrue.”.When asked about whether or not he believed that the CanSino deal put Canadians at a vaccine disadvantage, Kmiec said: “Well we [Canadians] were and we are [disadvantaged regarding vaccines]..“The vaccine rollout has obviously sped up quite a bit since then but we’re behind the United Kingdom and other Western countries which got their vaccine deliveries much sooner..“We had an entire wave in the spring time that is totally the fault of the Liberals. The United Kingdom didn’t go through that because they got their vaccine supply on time, and it’s also because they didn’t waste time to get an aggressive authoritarian government to do some basic research with them,” Kmiec said..“While these guys did. This CanSino Biological agreement that they did sign – and they were going to do it until it fell apart – just wasted time, and in a pandemic you don’t have time to waste trying to work with an authoritarian government you can’t trust.”.Kmiec added they should’ve gone straight for the major pharmaceutical companies and the major universities, like Oxford, that were already developing a potential vaccine candidate..“They should’ve gone to them instead of going to Beijing, but their inflection was ‘go to Beijing first’ which is again, it’s part of that pattern of weakness that they have and this affinity they have for the government in Beijing.”.When asked what he believed would happen next with this situation and how it might develop further, MP Kmiec said: “I’ve been hoping that there would be perhaps more media attention drawn to it. I’ll be honest, I filed a lot of Access to Information requests and you can see that in my public disclosure of my expenses for my office, I file a lot. I’ve probably filed over 500 this year already with my staff..“I do probably half the volume of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation just by myself. Most of the time I don’t get anything valuable, I don’t get anything outside of regular kind of hum drum of government documents..“But this one is pretty important, the government claimed something that was completely untrue. I think it’s opened questions like how much did they know, how much were they involved, and were they really on top of government operations as they should’ve been?”.Kmiec also said he hopes that this issue doesn’t get swept under the rug in time for the election: “I’m hoping it makes a bigger splash perhaps during the election and people draw their own conclusions.”.“The conclusion I draw from this – and I hope others will share it with me – is this government has a weakness for the authoritarian government in Beijing.”.Kmiec is hopeful that this will allow the Canadian public to make more informed decisions about their government..“Could we have done better? Was this a mistake? Did this prolong the pandemic in Canada? I think are all fair questions which is why we’ve called for this public inquiry. I’m hopeful this AtI will form part of the documents that this inquiry will look at.”.Jackie Conroy is a Correspondent for the Western Standard.jconroy@westernstandardonline.com
MP Tom Kmiec filed an Access to Information request that revealed a secret government payout to a Chinese vaccine company, and raises many questions about the Liberal government’s handling of COVID-19..Calgary Shepard MP Tom Kmiec and his office recently filed an Access to Information request that unearthed some alarming information about a contracts between the National Research Council and a Chinese biological company called CanSino..Kmiec describes the discovery as beginning with the National Research Council (NRC), a government agency responsible for putting out grants and conducting research. The NRC was delegated during the pandemic to do research on COVID-19 vaccinations..Kmiec said “… the contract I got was one that was signed between the NRC and CanSino Biologics.” He went on to say CanSino “… has a very close connection to the central commission in Beijing, which is the government there. So basically they [the NRC] paid them a contract and … it said there was a non-refundable, non-creditable nominal fee, which basically means it’s an upfront cash transfer from the NRC to CanSino to do research..“So CanSino would then bear the costs of the lab work, paying all the scientists, doing all this stuff. It’s basically a signed contract to do the COVID-19 vaccine research and procurement in it, and that’s what that contract was all about.”.Kmiec also provides access for the public to view the contract to make a decision for themselves..“I made the whole AtI public so the whole contract is public. There’s a few redacted components, mainly – primarily – the actual moneys that were transferred. It’s available if you click on my Facebook page, publicly available to anyone..“It’s section 10 through 14 of the contract – one that says the NRC will pay the collaborator, which is the company – this non-refundable, non-creditable material transfer that they have an estimate of how much it will be..“Then when you continue, they also agree to a performance of work and they’ve attached something called a statement of work and deliverables. This is the explanation of what this contract is all about, and they’ve also attached a general conditions clause,” said Kmiec..“Now, I’ve seen in the news some people reached out to the minister’s office like other journalists have asked, and the response they got there was, ‘Well, we never transferred any actual cash ’cause the deal fell apart so quickly.’.“That doesn’t make any sense to me. If the government signed a deal, and just didn’t transfer the money, that seems like a very weird thing to do. And if the deal did fall apart they still signed an agreement, they were still going to pay them out a huge sum of money.”.Kmiec said although the Access to Information filing redacted the actual dollar amount that was paid to CanSino, the black square over top of it was very long – indicating a payment estimated to be in the millions..“You can also tell that it is a huge sum of money just based on how big the blackout area is. They can’t modify the original document, when they provided an AtI, so it has to be … in the millions because that would be a sufficient amount of zeros if they’re using the two decimal points after the four pennies. I think it’s in the billions just based on how big the space is.”.Liberal MP’s, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, have consistently denied not only the amount of money paid to CanSino but the entire contract itself..On May 12 2021 when asked by Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole in the House about why the government chose to give the contract to CanSino, Trudeau replied “That is simply not true, we signed seven vaccine contracts with vaccine makers from around the world and not one of them was from China.”.Trudeau’s sentiments were echoed by Liberal MP Sonia Sidhu in a Commons health committee meeting on June 11 saying “…that is not correct, we need to clarify there’s never been a contract between CanSino and the Government of Canada.”.Yet another Liberal MP, William Amos, told the same committee Feb. 18 2021 “… on the issue of CanSino, there is a false narrative being pedlled that Canada somehow put all its eggs in the CanSino basket.”.Iain Stewart, Research Council president at the time, announced on May 12 2020 that CanSino’s vaccine “…holds great promise,” and was “…one of only a handful of vaccine candidates in the world against COVID-19.”.Stewart also initially said the agency was “proud of our ongoing relationship with CanSino Biologics,” but later refused to answer MP’s questions about the contract at a Feb. 2 2021 hearing of the Commons industry committee..Kmiec said: “The Liberals lied at the beginning because they said they made no such agreement, that they didn’t transfer any cash, it turns out it’s true, I guess. They’re saying its true that they didn’t transfer any money, but they did sign an agreement and they were very very insistent that they had not at the beginning.”.Kmiec also cites this contract as an indication to the Liberals’ overall handling of pandemic provisions since the beginning of COVID-19..“They still botched the response to the pandemic from the very beginning by trying to get this deal signed with CanSino. They can’t pretend that the National Resource Council was doing this on its own – they were being directed by the government.”.“They claim they have no agreement. Now, there is an agreement in their own files, and now they’re still pretending they didn’t transfer the money. I simply don’t believe them.”.Kmiec speculated on how this was allowed to happen like this, saying:.“I think part of it is during a pandemic it’s easy to make really declaratory statements – either something is true a 100 % or false a 100 % – and I think they took a lot of political heat for their very close ties and almost an affinity to China..“I think that’s why they’re so aggressively pushing back against the claim that there was no contract, there was no money transferred. It’s because I think they’re worried the public has kind of realized that you cannot deal with an authoritarian government like the one in Beijing honestly..“Because they’re not honest with us, they’ve been holding two of our citizens – (and) many others – but two very prominent citizens, now the two Michael’s, for well over a thousand days now I think.”.Kmiec echoed the belief of many that the Trudeau administration has trust in the Chinese government, and cites their apathy in foreign policy concerning China..“The government has shown an immense weakness on anything related to the government in Beijing. If you tie in also the Uighurs genocide motion that was passed in the House of Commons the government … they just sent their foreign affairs minister to say he was abstaining on behalf of the government.”.Speculating on why the Liberal government has so adamantly denied the existence of the contract and the payout, Kmiec said “… again, that’s not leadership, that’s just such weakness in the face of an authoritarian government..“Then when it comes to things like this, when they do talk tough around the government in Beijing and pushing back, and then secretly you’re signing this agreement they then profusely have to deny..“I think it’s because they know they take a public hit in their polling and I think that’s all they ever look at. This doesn’t poll well, and therefore it’s best to just deny as harshly, and make a declaratory statement that’s absolutely false.”.According to Kmiec this isn’t the first time the Liberals have attempted something like this. “I’m used to this, this isn’t the first time they said something that turned out to be completely untrue.”.When asked about whether or not he believed that the CanSino deal put Canadians at a vaccine disadvantage, Kmiec said: “Well we [Canadians] were and we are [disadvantaged regarding vaccines]..“The vaccine rollout has obviously sped up quite a bit since then but we’re behind the United Kingdom and other Western countries which got their vaccine deliveries much sooner..“We had an entire wave in the spring time that is totally the fault of the Liberals. The United Kingdom didn’t go through that because they got their vaccine supply on time, and it’s also because they didn’t waste time to get an aggressive authoritarian government to do some basic research with them,” Kmiec said..“While these guys did. This CanSino Biological agreement that they did sign – and they were going to do it until it fell apart – just wasted time, and in a pandemic you don’t have time to waste trying to work with an authoritarian government you can’t trust.”.Kmiec added they should’ve gone straight for the major pharmaceutical companies and the major universities, like Oxford, that were already developing a potential vaccine candidate..“They should’ve gone to them instead of going to Beijing, but their inflection was ‘go to Beijing first’ which is again, it’s part of that pattern of weakness that they have and this affinity they have for the government in Beijing.”.When asked what he believed would happen next with this situation and how it might develop further, MP Kmiec said: “I’ve been hoping that there would be perhaps more media attention drawn to it. I’ll be honest, I filed a lot of Access to Information requests and you can see that in my public disclosure of my expenses for my office, I file a lot. I’ve probably filed over 500 this year already with my staff..“I do probably half the volume of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation just by myself. Most of the time I don’t get anything valuable, I don’t get anything outside of regular kind of hum drum of government documents..“But this one is pretty important, the government claimed something that was completely untrue. I think it’s opened questions like how much did they know, how much were they involved, and were they really on top of government operations as they should’ve been?”.Kmiec also said he hopes that this issue doesn’t get swept under the rug in time for the election: “I’m hoping it makes a bigger splash perhaps during the election and people draw their own conclusions.”.“The conclusion I draw from this – and I hope others will share it with me – is this government has a weakness for the authoritarian government in Beijing.”.Kmiec is hopeful that this will allow the Canadian public to make more informed decisions about their government..“Could we have done better? Was this a mistake? Did this prolong the pandemic in Canada? I think are all fair questions which is why we’ve called for this public inquiry. I’m hopeful this AtI will form part of the documents that this inquiry will look at.”.Jackie Conroy is a Correspondent for the Western Standard.jconroy@westernstandardonline.com
