OTTAWA — Beijing is shelling out big bucks to spread its message deep inside the Ottawa bubble, buying ad space to publish editorials in a niche Parliament Hill newspaper directly targeting Canada’s top policymakers.
Since 2022, China’s embassy in Ottawa has published 37 editorials in The Hill Times, a twice-weekly newspaper distributed on Parliament Hill with content often of interest to federal political insiders
OTTAWA — While the case of Biwei Zhang moves through the courts in Brussels, where an appeals court has extended the detention of the Canadian intern from China accused of espionage inside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s military high command, a second file involving a Chinese national living and studying in Ontario — whose phone, United States officials found, held photographs of himself and others in tactical formations holding rifle-styled firearms, after he was caught photographing American aircraft in Chicago and admitted to a similar operation at Toronto’s airport — is opening in federal court in Michigan.
Seems the LPC is a ChiCom subsidiary.
BRUSSELS – A Belgian appeals court on Monday rejected the release appeal of Biwei Zhang, the Canadian intern accused of involvement in a criminal organization and of espionage inside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s military command. The Chamber of Indictments in Brussels extended her pre-trial detention by a month.
The ruling comes days after a European investigative consortium published the most detailed reporting yet on how the closely guarded case began, and on what Canada’s part in it was.
SAN DIEGO — A sworn FBI affidavit unsealed Wednesday describes a seven-year investigation into a Chinese hacking operation that targeted NASA, the Federal Reserve, the Department of Energy, the Justice Department, the National Institutes of Health and, this year, the United States Senate.
The filing says payments from China’s Ministry of State Security to Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology Co. indicate that the private company conducted malicious cyber operations for Beijing. Some of its hackers were former members of the People’s Liberation Army who used their military connections to obtain contracts and subcontracts for offensive cyber operations.
In the wake of Ottawa’s forceful response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war, the White House on Wednesday said Canada “is joined only by the People’s Republic of China in choosing retaliation over negotiation.”
It’s a strange parallel for Mr. Trump’s team to draw – given Beijing fought the United States to a draw last year, winning concessions and breathing room to further shore up its economy against future U.S. pressure – but one that has also been made in China itself.
According to a Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) report released in March 2026, China views Canada as a “high priority” for foreign interference. The strategic rationale is straightforward. Our geographic, institutional, and cultural proximity to the United States means that a compromised Canada is a direct liability to Washington. If Beijing — America’s primary security challenger — can exert enough influence to misalign Canadian domestic and foreign policy from that of the US, it effectively renders North America vulnerable.
The dispute between Canada and the United States (US) is usually described as another argument over tariffs. Steel, aluminum, automobiles, and agriculture dominate the headlines, but those are the visible symptoms of a much larger disagreement.
Washington is trying to build a protected North American economic and security bloc capable of competing with China. Mark Carney is trying to reduce Canada’s dependence on the US by expanding trade with China, Europe, and other markets. Those strategies are now colliding, and Canada cannot pretend indefinitely that it can pursue both.
Brabim Karki’s piece here at The American Spectator on Monday about the breakoff in trade talks between the U.S. and Canada is a must-read, though it’s a little incomplete (and this column is an attempt to fill in a gap). Karki notes, and quite accurately so…
China’s nationalist tabloid Global Times praised Canada’s retaliation against US tariffs, casting Ottawa’s move as validating Beijing’s opposition to Washington’s protectionist trade policies.
Calling Canada’s action “Chinese-style counterattack,” the newspaper said in an editorial Monday that the government’s decision shows that “more countries are realizing that concessions toward the US do not necessarily bring respect and stability.”
Carney does not want a deal, not with the US, unless China says so.
Oh look who’s back!
Canadians angry because U.S. trade approached cultural sovereignty issues. Canada then vows to influence American opinion.
Think about it. Let me know when you see it. https://t.co/ttQ19FA6Ao
— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) August 23, 2026
Six months after Mark Carney’s historic trip to China, the first for a Canadian prime minister in nearly a decade, CBC announced it will reopen its Beijing bureau. Pending final approvals, a Canadian journalist will be permanently working in mainland China for the first time in years.
The bureau shuttered in 2022, after Beijing would not renew its correspondent’s visa. But that was when the Canadian government viewed the country as one of our greatest security threats. Today, the Canadian government says China is our “strategic partner.”
More Canadian journalists on the ground to cover a world superpower is welcome news. But will they be safe from documented spying, arrest, and harassment? What will they actually be allowed to report on?
This month, China’s Sea Legend Shipping launched the first regular container service through the Arctic, along what it calls the “Ice Silk Road.” The route, dubbed “China-Europe Arctic Express,” connects Ningbo, on China’s east coast, with England’s Felixstowe. The Chinese-run shipper plans eight voyages this summer season from this month to early October.
Sea Legend, which will use Russia’s Northern Sea Route, promises to cut in half the current 40-day sailing time.
OTTAWA — The House of Commons public safety committee will meet Monday to decide whether to investigate potential security screening failures, after a Canadian woman was arrested in Belgium for allegedly spying on NATO.
On July 25, Belgian authorities announced the arrest of a “Canadian national of Chinese origin” on suspicion of spying for a third country while working as an intern at NATO’s central military headquarters in southern Belgium. The suspect was subsequently identified as Biwei “Claire” Zhang, a computer science and systems engineering graduate in her early 30s who’d previously held positions at multiple Canadian federal agencies.
“For us this is not a trade war,” Jamieson Greer said last week.
It’s a statement at odds with how Canadians have viewed the ongoing trade dispute with the United States. It’s not the first time that Greer, Donald Trump’s chief trade negotiator, has made those remarks; he’s also not the first senior American official to dispute the idea that Canada is in a trade war with the United States.
Earlier last month, Belgian authorities arrested Biwei Zhang, a Canadian intern of Chinese origin working at NATO’s military headquarters in Mons, Belgium, on suspicion of espionage. Prosecutors say she is suspected of spying on behalf of a third country—identified by Reuters as China—and of belonging to a criminal organization. Before her posting to NATO, Zhang had worked across the Canadian federal government, including stints at the National Research Council, Statistics Canada, Employment and Social Development Canada, and the Canadian Space Agency. She even cleared a CSIS and RCMP background check, despite a 2023 finding that she had committed fraud.
The White House said in a report on Thursday that more than 40 countries had helped China sidestep US tariffs by routing exports through nations that face lower American import duties.
The countries named include Canada, India, Mexico, Japan and South Korea, which the White House said had helped China evade tens of billions of dollars in tariffs, which are levied on companies importing goods.
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said it had cost “American jobs and billions in revenue”.
Given Carney’s love of China it’s no surprise.
