The head of the Public Health Agency of Canada refused to explain to a House of Commons committee the reasons behind why a prominent Chinese Canadian scientist and her husband who worked at Canada’s top laboratory were fired after a police investigation. At the Committee on Canada-China Relations on March 22, PHAC president Iain Stewart was grilled about the termination of two scientists from their employment at the National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg, Canada’s highest-security laboratory. On July 5, 2019, Xiangguo Qiu, her husband Keding Cheng, and a number of Qiu’s students were escorted from the NML building and stripped of their security clearances, CBC News reported at the time. Last month, a PHAC spokesperson revealed that the couple were fired in January from their positions at NML for a possible “policy breach.” “We cannot disclose additional information, nor comment further, for reasons of confidentiality,” the spokesperson told CBC …