Canada’s Trudeau government is reportedly funding a University of Alberta project that is collaborating with the Wuhan Institute of Virology — the Chinese lab that may have spawned the coronavirus.
The federal government has provided an $828,000 grant to professor Le Xiaochun, who is an environmental toxicology researcher at the Edmonton, Alberta academic facility, the Globe and Mail reported Saturday.
President Donald Trump said Friday he will end federal funding established by his predecessor, President Barack Obama in 2015, for the Chinese lab. Numerous reports have cited the lab as the place where the COVID-19 virus originated and was subsequently leaked to the local community — wreaking a devastating loss in human lives.(RELATED: 3M Will Send China-Produced Respirators To Canada For COVID-19 Crisis)
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during the daily briefing of the White House Coronavirus Task Force in the briefing room at the White House April 16, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
At the daily coronavirus task force news conference, the president was asked why the National Institutes of Health was including the Chinese laboratory in a $3.7 million dollar stipend to conduct research.
Prof. Le’s research team is working with scientists from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency in an effort to create coronavirus detection procedures that would be provided to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for verification.
The Trudeau government has not explained why, with all the controversy surrounding it, the Wuhan lab was named as a partner in the research project. (RELATED: Trudeau Sent 17 Tons Of Coronavirus Protective Supplies To China — Now Canada Running Low)
Canada’s Minister of Health Patty Hajdu attends a news conference as efforts continue to help slow the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada March 23, 2020. REUTERS/Blair Gable
Funding for the initiative is provided by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), via Canadian Health Minister Patty Hajdu. Hajdu has been a vocal critic of those who did not accept China’s early estimates of its coronavirus deaths, accusing a journalist who questioned that data of spreading “conspiracy” theories.
“There is no indication that the data that came out of China in terms of their infection rate, and their death rate, was falsified in any way,” she told reporters in Ottawa.
Hajdu’s spokesman, Cole Davidson, told the Globe and Mail that all CIHR projects are subject to a “rigorous peer review” by “expert scientists in an impartial, objective and fair manner.”