Anandasangaree Admitted Screening Gaps. Publish the NATO Clearance Ledger.

Espionage allegations remain allegations. The screening failure questions are now official.

Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree gave Parliament the line that should end the fog around the alleged NATO intern espionage case: Canada’s security apparatus is strong, he said, but “there are gaps.” That admission demands receipts, not another closed-door reassurance.

The case is serious and still before Belgian authorities. Reporting says Belgian officials arrested a Canadian national of Chinese origin in late July at NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Mons, Belgium, on allegations of espionage on behalf of a third country and participation in a criminal organization. Canadian media have identified the suspect as Biwei Zhang, also known as Claire Zhang; officials have not publicly confirmed her identity. She remains in pretrial detention, and nothing here treats the charges as proven.

But the process question is not speculative. The Canadian Press reported Monday that Anandasangaree told the Commons public safety committee the woman had been granted a security clearance by Global Affairs Canada. CSIS deputy director Vanessa Lloyd said the type of NATO internship involved would normally require a secret clearance. The minister also said deputy heads grant clearances based on information that can include CSIS and RCMP checks.

That is the accountability zone. If Global Affairs sponsored or cleared access, if CSIS and the RCMP informed the checks, and if deputy heads hold final responsibility, then Canadians deserve a non-operational timeline showing who did what, when, and what has changed since the arrest.

The questions are sharper because public reporting says Zhang previously worked inside multiple federal departments and agencies, including the Canadian Space Agency, Statistics Canada and Employment and Social Development Canada. Reporting also says a Public Service Commission finding connected to a CBSA hiring process became a Federal Court matter dismissed in 2024. Parliament does not need to expose intelligence methods to ask whether adverse information moved properly through personnel and clearance systems.

The conservative accountability standard is simple: protect sources, courts and allied intelligence, but stop hiding process failure behind national-security smoke. Ottawa should publish a redacted NATO clearance ledger covering the clearance sponsor, clearance level and dates, department-by-department work history, adverse-information checks, interdepartmental file-sharing steps, Belgian or NATO warning timeline, and the specific screening fixes ordered after July.

Anandasangaree says there will be “serious learnings.” Canadians have heard that phrase after too many Liberal management failures. Learnings without dates, owners and audit trails are just damage-control language.

Canada asks allies to trust its institutions. That trust is not protected by vagueness. It is protected by proving that gaps are found, named, fixed and independently checked.