CSIS briefed Natural Resources Canada about Dennis Lu not once, not twice, but three times between 2000 and 2021. For two decades, Canada's spy agency flagged concerns about a senior scientist collaborating with Chinese counterparts on government energy research. And yet, nothing happened.

Then, in June 2023, Lu traveled to China just before his retirement. While there, he allegedly forwarded nearly 2,000 emails from his government account to his personal account.

When he returned to Canada and found his access had been blocked, a manager ordered it reinstated to process his retirement. Weeks later, Lu allegedly copied more than 2,600 documents from a departmental shared server. 

He has since been charged with breach of trust and unauthorized use of federal computers.

Sheila Gunn Reid and Tamara Lich broke down the case on Wednesday's Buffalo Roundtable, drawing on reporting by Sam Cooper of The Bureau.

An Ontario Superior Court judge has now ordered CSIS and the Privy Council Office to disclose sensitive records in the prosecution — a significant departure, Sheila noted, from the Liberals' track record of stonewalling on China-related security files.

"For the first time, a judge is ordering the records turned over," Sheila said. "Which is completely in contrast to what happened with the Winnipeg lab."

The Winnipeg connection loomed large over the conversation.

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Sheila recalled that Chinese scientists at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg had transferred virus samples to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a military-linked biolab the U.S. government has identified as the likely source of COVID-19. 

When Parliament ordered those documents disclosed, the Trudeau government refused. Trudeau prorogued Parliament over it. "The Conservatives tried to make a complaint to the RCMP," Sheila said, "who were not all that interested."

Both hosts drew what Sheila called a conspiracy theory "rooted in fact" — that the Canadian government's persistent deference to Beijing, in spite of repeated foreign interference scandals, may stem from the Chinese government knowing exactly what came out of that Winnipeg lab, and the Liberals knowing they know.

"Wouldn't it be a bad look," Sheila said, "to have allowed what might have been a precursor to COVID-19 to come out of a lab in Winnipeg, end up back in Wuhan, and then be unleashed upon the world?"

Tamara noted the prosecution also lands squarely in the middle of Mark Carney's sweeping re-engagement with China, in which both nations have pledged that Canada will become a major exporter of energy to the Chinese market.

"Canada has a China problem," she said. "A foreign interference problem with the Chinese."

The Buffalo Roundtable airs Wednesdays at 11 a.m. MT / 1 p.m. ET.