OTTAWA — On July 14, 2014, a Facebook account belonging to Biwei Zhang, the woman now accused of spying inside NATO’s military command and of membership in a criminal organization, published a photograph of Justin Trudeau speaking from a stage at the Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel, in a ballroom holding several hundred guests seated at banquet tables, phones raised toward the podium.
One thing is certain. Trudeau never had Canada’s best interests at heart. Neither does Carney.
VANCOUVER – Kennedy Stewart, the former mayor of Vancouver, says a sitting member of British Columbia’s cabinet is the subject of an active investigation over alleged links to the Chinese government, and that Canada’s federal and provincial leadership, including Premier David Eby, know that foreign interference has reached into the country’s institutions and are not acting on it — a failure Stewart says extends to what he describes as a sustained attack on his own 2022 mayoralty campaign, mounted from inside a foreign consulate and from a radio transmitter placed beyond the reach of Canadian regulators
The NATO intern arrested last month by Belgian authorities on espionage charges has a work history with the Canadian government that is more extensive than previously reported, according to employment records she filed in court.
Biwei Zhang, a 33-year-old who has also used her English name, Claire Zhang, was charged with espionage while working for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the city of Mons. The Globe and Mail has previously reported that a source said the overseas posting was sponsored by Global Affairs Canada, and that the department was responsible for her security check.
Prime Minister Mark Carney said Wednesday that Canada has “been involved from the start” in the case of a Canadian intern at NATO’s military headquarters in Belgium now facing espionage charges,
Carney spoke in Toronto on Wednesday after making a housing announcement, and was asked whether he has spoken with NATO or the Belgian authorities about what Canada will do next and about the security risk posed by the spying case.
That’s Carney speak for “We gave Biwei her marching orders.”
OTTAWA – Within the span of a few days last week, on opposite sides of the world, two democracies revealed how differently they answer the same threat.
In Taipei, the Supreme Court handed down back-to-back rulings upholding prison sentences for two political candidates convicted of taking Beijing’s money to subvert Taiwan’s elections. In Brussels, a Canadian woman of Chinese origin — an intern inside the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s military command — stood behind closed doors as a pre-trial chamber weighed espionage allegations.
Carney looks to influential outsiders to head Canada’s embassy in Beijing, sources say
Martin Cauchon, a vice-chair of the Canada China Business Council lobby group and former Liberal cabinet minister, is under consideration to be Ottawa’s envoy to China as both countries work to mend fractured diplomatic and economic ties, three sources say.
Mr. Cauchon, a justice minister in Jean Chrétien’s government, has a long history of developing close business ties with China. Prime Minister Mark Carney is seeking a business-friendly relationship with Beijing as he looks to diversify trade away from the United States. He has set out to double non-U.S. exports globally over the next decade.
In Belgium, Claire Biwei Zhang, the Canadian woman allegedly spying on NATO has launched an appeal to be released from pre-trial detention, while the Canadian government is scrambling to investigate its screening protocols to find out how it may have been infiltrated by a foreign power.
Global Affairs has acknowledged that Zhang’s security clearance for her NATO internship was approved by the Government of Canada after she was vetted by CSIS. According to its 2025 annual report, CSIS completed 129,740 screenings for the federal government last year.
When Canada announced earlier this year that it would allow a token number of Chinese-made electric vehicles into the country, the gesture didn’t seem so much about climate action as a sop to ease Chinese tariffs on Canadian canola.
Now, it very much appears like the opening gambit in a deeper engagement with China on clean energy. Following up on Prime Minister Mark Carney’s momentous meeting with Chinese Premier Xi Jinping in January, Industry Minister Melanie Joly was in Beijing last month to discuss the feasibility of Canadian-Chinese EV ventures.
Meanwhile, the Canada China Business Council is organizing a cleantech mission to China in Beijing in November.
The CBC is owned by China now.
A Canadian NATO intern arrested in Belgium on suspicion of spying for China was ordered by a federal watchdog to take a course in ethics after being found to have committed fraud in applying twice under two slightly different identities for a public service job.
Claire (Biwei) Zhang, a Canadian of Chinese origin, worked in public service roles, including at Statistics Canada, before taking up the NATO internship at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, known as SHAPE, in Mons near the French border.
You get caught cheating and still keep your job?
China is preparing for a different kind of war. Canada is still preparing for yesterday’s. The defining geopolitical struggle of the twenty-first century will not be fought solely with tanks, warships, or fighter aircraft. Increasingly, it will be contested through factories, artificial intelligence, critical minerals, supply chains, advanced manufacturing, and technological innovation. Beijing understands this. Most Western governments, including our own, are only beginning to catch up.
VANCOUVER — The Bureau has learned from a source with direct knowledge that Richmond’s mayor and city councillors were asked to attend an extraordinary closed-door briefing delivered by senior regional officials of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
Chinese-brand cars are sitting at Canadian ports, waiting to be unloaded. The first dealerships of BYD, Geely, and Chery are set to open this fall in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montréal, with more to follow by the end of the year. And not one of those cars can legally be sold in the United States.
That gap—vehicles landing at America’s doorstep that can’t be sold across the border—is the center of a quiet contest now unfolding on the northern frontier. The United States has walled out
Chinese cars with a 100 percent tariff and a national security rule that bars China-owned automakers from the U.S. market even if they build their cars on American soil.
But Canada has moved the other way. In January, it agreed to let in a rising number of Chinese electric vehicles at a tariff of only 6.1 percent, breaking ranks with Washington.
Allegations that China had recruited a former Canadian government employee as a spy could worsen relations between Ottawa and Beijing that had been gradually improving since Mark Carney became prime minister.
The Chinese authorities did not respond to requests for comment Friday about a Canadian NATO intern accused by Belgian prosecutors of spying on behalf of Beijing.
The arrest of a Canadian intern accused of spying inside NATO’s senior military headquarters in Belgium reaches beyond one person or one failed security check. It shows how hostile states can combine espionage, criminal networks, technology, and trusted access to weaken an alliance without firing a shot.
Belgian prosecutors allege that the intern, who is of Chinese origin, conducted espionage for an unidentified third country while interning at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, known as SHAPE, in Mons, Belgium. They also accuse her of belonging to a criminal organization.
VANCOUVER — Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West called on British Columbia Conservative Leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay Wednesday night to take an unverified allegation about one of her own caucus members to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and expel her from caucus, or else apologize to her — the first significant public intervention by an elected official into a purported leak that has moved through British Columbia political circles at speed since Tuesday evening.
