Prime Minister Mark Carney in the House of Commons on Wednesday.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
Jennifer Welsh is the director of the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University.
Margaret Biggs is the Matthews Fellow in Global Public Policy at Queen’s University.
Commentators have been carefully parsing Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent speeches to decipher the new direction of Canadian foreign policy and vision for a middle power-shaped global order.
What emerges is a twist on Canada’s traditional internationalism, rooted in some key imperatives. First, to secure Canada’s ongoing prosperity, trade and economic relationships need to be diversified to minimize the risks of dependency. Second, to preserve Canada’s sovereignty, it must build strategic autonomy and strengthen its own defence and industrial capacity. Finally, Canada needs to work with like-minded countries, in what Mr. Carney calls “variable geometry,” to advance shared interests and solve global problems.
The Prime Minister’s coalition of the like-minded has started with traditional allies and trading partners – Japan, Australia, Europe and South Korea – and efforts to strike a new relationship with India. What is missing, however, is how emerging and developing economies fit into this new strategic thrust. Where is their place in what Mr. Carney describes as the “dense web of connections across trade, investment, culture on which we can draw for future challenges and opportunities”?
Emerging and developing economies represent a large and growing share of the world’s population and economic opportunity. They too seek to build sovereignty and prosperity, and have long sought to remake the international order so that it serves the many rather than the powerful few. As Finnish President Alexander Stubb has stated, they will determine what the next world order ultimately looks like.
To meet this moment of global turmoil, Canada’s government must look beyond traditional relations with advanced economies. A future-proof foreign policy should articulate how relations with emerging and developing economies can advance Canada’s core interests and values, and contribute to a safer, more just and more sustainable world.
That agenda starts with addressing three critical questions.
First, how does Canada redefine and re-equip itself as a “global partner” rather than a “Northern donor”? For too long Canada has viewed developing and emerging economies as primarily aid recipients or export markets, but rarely as trade, investment, security and knowledge partners. Yet countries of the Global South have growing economic dynamism and global geopolitical heft. They are seeking a profoundly different relationship with us: A partnership, rooted in mutual benefit and respect.
Second, what are the “mutual interest” priorities that connect Canada and countries of the Global South? Our prospective partners’ priorities are not so different from ours. Like Canada, they aim to boost the productive economy and job creation, which enable investments in badly needed public services. Like Canada, they seek reliable trading relations and rules, and want to leverage or secure access to the key assets that Mr. Carney has declared essential to exercising sovereignty and strategic autonomy in today’s world: Food, critical minerals, energy (including clean energy), semiconductors, and AI.
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Canada has much to offer, and much to gain, from partnering with Global South countries on a shared sovereignty and prosperity agenda. For example, strengthening the capacity of countries to govern, regulate, and responsibly procure AI systems is a key dimension of 21st century international co-operation. Similarly, on critical minerals, Canada and resource-rich emerging and developing economies have a shared interest in responsible mining and development of these resources, including local value creation and jobs, accountability measures and environmental protection.
Third, how can Canada, in a world of great-power rivalry, work collaboratively with Global South countries on threats that confront us all? The contemporary challenges that will impact Canadians – future pandemics, climate change, biodiversity loss, migration pressures, transnational crime, the risks of new technologies – depend on sustained international co-operation. Transforming the global health system is a case in point. Here, Canada could lead a pragmatic reform coalition, given its deep national expertise – particularly in maternal and child health, vaccine technology, and leveraging the power of AI.
Finally, Canada urgently needs to join and shape the global conversation on a new paradigm for development co-operation – one that maximizes developing country leadership, eliminates overlap and duplication in multilateral efforts, and harnesses private capital and innovative development finance. It should also ensure that international assistance dollars, which remain critically important, are targeted at areas of greatest need: Poverty reduction, fragile contexts, and humanitarian emergencies.
The Prime Minister’s international vision, laid out at Davos, speaks to those countries “in between” competing global hegemons.
As it debates whether and when to release a new foreign policy strategy, his government needs a wider and deeper agenda for sovereignty and prosperity, one that builds partnerships with emerging and developing economies.
