OTTAWA — The House of Commons public safety committee has voted unanimously to investigate Canada’s security screening processes, after a Canadian woman was arrested in Belgium for allegedly spying on NATO.
The committee adopted a special, out-of-session motion on Monday to probe the vetting of Biwei “Claire” Zhang by Canadian security officials before the start of an internship last summer at NATO’s central military headquarters in Belgium.
Conservative MP Dane Lloyd, the motion’s author, said that the international headlines about Zhang echoed multiple recent high-profile security breaches.
“Canadians are, rightly, very concerned, when we’ve seen multiple cases in the past number of years, related people who have been given national security classifications who have been found to be committing acts of espionage,” said Llyod.
Lloyd referred to members of the RCMP and Canadian Forces who’ve recently been convicted of or charged with sharing state secrets.
The committee agreed to hold at least three priority meetings, call upon federal Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree as a witness, and report its findings and recommendations on the matter to the House.
Anandasangaree committed in late July to “get to the bottom of what happened” with Zhang’s screening.
On July 25, Belgian authorities announced they’d arrested a “Canadian national of Chinese origin” on suspicion of spying for a third country while interning at the NATO headquarters. Subsequent reporting identified the suspect as Zhang, a computer science and systems engineering graduate in her early 30s who’d previously held positions at multiple Canadian federal agencies.
Zhang’s security clearance for the overseas NATO internship was approved by the Canadian government after she was vetted by CSIS.
In 2023, she was found to have committed fraud by submitting two separate applications to the Canada Border Services Agency under slightly different names and taking the associated job examination twice.
The fall session of the House of Commons is set to start on Monday, September 21.
The NDP does not have any seats on the public safety committee, or any House committee, but NDP public safety critic Jenny Kwan said she supported the investigation.
” The government needs to conduct a comprehensive review of how this individual was vetted and cleared for a sensitive NATO posting, including the role played by Global Affairs Canada, CSIS and the RCMP,” said Kwan in an email.
Kwan also it was important to ensure that candidate screening remain “evidence based” and “(does) not become a vehicle for racial or ethnic profiling.”
National Post
rmohamed@postmedia.com
Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.
