‘It’s going to happen again’: Former CSIS head on how China snuck a spy into Canada’s NATO mission
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. . .
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 Hub’s managing editor Harrison Lowman spoke to Richard Fadden, former CSIS director and one-time national security advisor to the prime minister, to discuss how Zhang slipped through Canada’s vetting system, the brazenness of China’s espionage efforts, and whether Ottawa’s national security posture (including its new foreign influence registry) is keeping pace. HARRISON LOWMAN:Where does this rank in terms of Canadian intelligence cock- ups—where we’ve allowed ourselves to be infiltrated by foreign powers? How embarrassed should we be?RICHARD FADDEN:We should be embarrassed. Any country who has one of their citizens caught in something like this should be. But it happens to everybody. The Brits have gone through a variety of these, so have the Americans and the French. I think it’s more a reflection of the ongoing tenacity of a few of our adversaries; China amongst them. For a long time, they’ve had an ongoing intelligence gathering operation. I don’t think they want to go to World War III, but they want to change the world. In the West, unless we want to turn into something like what was pictured in Orwell’s1984, we’re going to get caught every now and then. …So my main reaction, to be honest, is I was not surprised. HARRISON LOWMAN:Is the reason this has been getting so much attention because some of the points are so strange. It has a Mr. Bean-like feel. She was caught outside loitering, surveying NATO buildings, and asking hypotheticals about breaches of security protocols. Have you ever, in your experience, seen a worse spy?RICHARD FADDEN:It’s pretty bad. It’s pretty naive. I don’t quite understand how anybody could be quite that unaware. If you ask more than three or four questions about security, somebody is supposed to say, “Excuse me. ” Wandering around defence establishments with a camera, even in Canada or the U. K. , is a stupid thing to do. It’s a bit Monty Pythonesque. HARRISON LOWMAN:How did she not get flagged beforehand? CSIS and the RCMP gave her a background check before granting her NATO security clearance. How does she survive a check like that, especially when in 2023 she committed fraud with Canada Border Services, having done a job exam twice using separate names?RICHARD FADDEN:Yeah, that I don’t get. I think unless she had been granted top secret clearance where they would actually look into her background, the system searches existing databases: criminality, national security, finance, and things of that nature. And if you’re not in the database, then you get a wash. The fraud might have not been in the database. Part of the problem is the databases are not always as well connected as they should be. I think it’s way better than it used to be. I also think that on the criminality side, while the police are pretty good at putting things in the system, unless there’s an actual conviction, they don’t get recorded. I think one of the biggest challenges we have today is to make sure that all the departmental databases can be effectively accessed when we’re doing security checks without creating an Armageddon of governmental control over information. …So the fault, if there is one, is why wasn’t, in all of this research, a red flag raised somewhere?…I think one of the messages we have to take from this young woman’s arrest is that yes, it’s unfortunate. We have to figure out when wrong. It’s going to happen again, and what we have to do is close as many doors and windows as we can, and chug along with our allies and hope that we don’t let any really significant espionage take place. HARRISON LOWMAN:This is going to happen again. This is one in a long line of Chinese spies in Canada working inside our government. In 2021, it was the two infectious disease scientists at the high-security Winnipeg lab. They escaped,stole materials as well as information. A year after, it was a Hydro-Quebec employee researcher whoallegedly committedeconomic espionage for China. Last month, it was the former scientist for the Department of Natural Resources whoallegedly downloaded 2,000 documents to share with China. What message are the Chinese sending Canada by repeatedly doing this, especially during ongoing trade negotiations and as our previously frozen international relationship thaws?RICHARD FADDEN:I think what they’re telling us is that they are very practised in the skill of schizophrenia. If you look at Chinese political pronouncements, they are as pure as the driven snow. They advocate for the UN Charter for peace. On the other side of their personality, they have the one of the most advanced, if not the most advanced, security and intelligence offensive apparatus on the planet. …On things like their national interest and security, they have an entirely different mindset. They have almost unlimited resources, unlimited access to technology and people, and no legal and constitutional restraint. They trawl for people, for technology, that might help them and just keep at it. In a way that will drive wedges in the West, that will periodically bring them intellectual property or intelligence that they find useful. HARRISON LOWMAN:And Canada’s approach?Prime Minister Carney said he wanted a “strategicrelationship” with China. I think they were ill-chosen words. A strategic relationship means more than trade. I understand we have to diversify trade. It’s important. By all accounts, he’s doing a pretty good job at that. But to think that we can have a strategic relationship with China, given what I call their schizophrenia, I think is rather optimistic. I think we need to be schizophrenic too. Yes, we want to trade with them. Yes, we want to invest with them. Yes, we want tourism. But we need to acknowledge even more than we have that they are not our friends geopolitically, and we have to build defences against them. …Every now and then the government should come out and say, “Look, guys, enough. ” I think occasionally we should try and do this a little bit more than we have. I think Mr. Trudeau’s government was mostly on social policy. Mr. Carney seems to be mostly on economic policy. But I think we elect governments to cover the waterfront: social, economic, national security, and operational policy. I don’t think they have found the right balance. HARRISON LOWMAN:We got the social policy. We got the economic policy. But it seems like we don’t have a messenger when it comes to the security policy. Right?RICHARD FADDEN:I think there’s some truth to that. We’ve been promised a national security policy for quite a while now. We haven’t got one. We don’t have a defence policy that’s up to date. And we don’t have a foreign policy. Why can’t Canada, like virtually every other country in the West, have a foreign, a defence, and a national security policy? I think it’s sending a message both to the Canadian public and possibly to the planet, that we’re not quite as serious about these things as we could be. And I don’t mean a 600-page royal commission-like report. I just mean an articulation of our broad objectives—acknowledging that yes, there’s some real positive things in the world, but there’s some really negative things in the world. And we don’t do that. If we could do the equivalent of the prime minister’s Davos speech around national security policy I think it would be a good thing. HARRISON LOWMAN:Do you have faith in the government’s newforeign influence registry?RICHARD FADDEN:I think it’s a useful tool. Is it going to solve the problems? Absolutely not. I think it’s very useful for example, if a former minister or official is being paid to work for another country. I think that’s a good thing for us to know. Because there are a lot of them around, and people don’t really acknowledge it. And if people try and get around it, we should fine them significantly. HARRISON LOWMAN:You talk about it being a tool. Critics are concerned about how it’s mandate is being downplayed out of the gate. The foreign influence transparency commissioner Anton Boegman recently said the goal is not to stop foreign influence or create a stigma around it, but simply to ensure it’s not being done “covertly, deceptively, coercively, that sort of way. ”How does that land with you?RICHARD FADDEN:I don’t agree with the way he’s phrased it. By definition, the foreign influence that we’re talking about is foreign influence that is covert and secret. Nobody is expecting anybody anywhere to try and eliminate foreign influence. Embassies do it every day. I think he was being a little bit loose in in his logic when he was talking about it this way. If it’s covert, if it’s secret, if it’s not known to the public, the light of day is a good thing to cast on it. HARRISON LOWMAN:One thing I’m struck by in the last few years is that the Chinese Communist Party never admits they’re spying on us or interfering with us—ever. Even if we catch them in the act. One might think that part of the “thawing” of our relationship might include admitting that they’ve done this, take some ownership, and move forward. Instead, they say, “We never did this, are not doing it now, and won’t in the future. ” It feels like gaslighting?RICHARD FADDEN:Great powers never admit they’re engaged in espionage. They either say nothing at all, which is usually what the Chinese do, or they deny any direct accusation. I just don’t expect countries to do that. Even Canada, the little bit of espionage we do every now and then, the government will say, “We do not comment on operational matters. ” But the Chinese, in particular, they don’t. Nor do the Russians. The Americans don’t, for that matter. HARRISON LOWMAN:So, is Canada doing any spying currently? Most of our manoeuvres are defensive. We don’t really haveoffensive capabilities. Are you saying that as more resources go into this we are branching out more and spying?RICHARD FADDEN:Under relativelyrecent amendmentsto the CSIS Act, they can collect security intelligence abroad. So, I do believe they’re doing some of that. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.