Eighteen months into Mark Carney’s government, Canadians can see the pieces of a foreign and defence policy scattered across the table like a jigsaw puzzle. But no one has shown us the box lid , the picture the pieces are supposed to assemble into.
On September 17, Carney added another piece: an address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg. It follows his absence from the UN General Assembly’s marquee address, now skipped two years running. Why Europe and not the UN?
This is the consequence of a promise not kept. The 2025 Liberal platform pledged “a new, full foreign policy” and a companion national security review. Neither has been tabled. We are governing by announcements in foreign capitals instead.
Carney has pursued a defence-based economic shift, including a commitment to make Canada an arms exporter. Now the government is pursuing deeper integration with Brussels: a fall summit intended to build a “much stronger and deeper economic and security alliance.”
Why is a country that spent a year diversifying to escape over-dependence on one power now building a major new architecture of integration with another partner , one that moves by consensus, on its own timetable, and through contentious political systems? What has become of the idea that Canada should work with coalitions of middle powers?
The scattered board signals that risks which do not fit neatly into “defence economy” or “trade diversification” are being pushed aside.
Canadian climate strategy is moribund even as the UN prepares to confront the reality that climate overshoot is becoming unavoidable. Nuclear proliferation barely registers: months after the Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference collapsed without consensus for the third time, Canada has been largely absent from efforts to rebuild safeguards. AI threats are ignored.
The gaps run wider still, and they cluster in a revealing pattern.
Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine” claims the Western Hemisphere as an American sphere of influence. Canada is sitting on the fence rather than working with the Latin American and Caribbean states facing the same pressure.
Africa fares worse. Carney has said the continent is “not among his government’s early priorities.” Canada has pulled most of its peacekeepers off the continent — a decision South Africa’s envoy to Ottawa criticized as out of step with Canada’s middle-power ambitions.
On the Middle East, while Canada has recognized a Palestinian state, the underlying posture is diplomatic paralysis: a government caught between principle and alliance, moving only when political pressure forces it to.
Deeper still is the absence of anything resembling a peace agenda , the oldest test of a middle power, and the one Canada is failing most quietly. Ottawa is shutting down overseas peacekeeping operations. Limiting violence and protecting civilians used to be something Canada spearheaded. Now it is something Canada is exiting.
Nor has Ottawa found its voice on the erosion of the international justice system that gives any peace agenda teeth. When the United States sanctioned a Canadian judge at the International Criminal Court in August 2025, as part of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s campaign to “dismantle” the court, Canada’s response was described as a “conspicuous silence” in the face of a Trump effort to make the world safer for war criminals.
And no one in government seems willing to ask the harder question raised by deepening military integration with Washington from the expansion of NORAD to the proposed “Golden Dome” missile shield and the broader problem of Canadian technology and equipment disappearing into systems over which Canada has no control.
Which raises the real question: is this a jigsaw puzzle, or a Mercator map?
The Mercator projection inflates whatever sits near the pole and shrinks everything nearer the equator to the margins. Substitute Brussels and Washington for the pole, and the pattern of this government’s attention begins to look remarkably similar. Europe and the trans-Atlantic relationship loom enormous. The Western Hemisphere, Africa, the Middle East, and the whole architecture of peace, justice, and civilian protection are pushed toward the edges.
🇨🇦 What's that old saw about first getting one's own house in order?
I don't see anything in the PM"s moves that give me pause. Early on, I had some reservations about enviromental concerns. They've been alleviated by the moves made in recent times.
I'm seeing the bigger picture he's painting.
We've got to get the dream, out of our collective Canadian systems and imaginations, at least the false belief they've declared and stoked; the one that insists they're exceptional.
That's a fever dream!
The rest of the Democratic world, may be ahead of us on that curve, but I think the move toward the EU is the best one. They are an, already working together collection, of some of those "middle powers" our PM brought to the world's attention at Davos.
They can benefit from the teachings of our still open wound, they pretty clearly respect our desire for sovergnity, and clearly see the view of what can be accomplished by widening their alliances, and I believe, it will serve us better than trying to revive an imploded, USian subserviant, UN.
That means some pain for us! The pain that always comes with a fever, because a multii-generational fever is what we're waking from; and like a fever, it's not over until all the symptoms disappear.
The fever dream(s). Many of us are still suffering under the illusion that the citizenry of the United States is somehow, exceptional. (That bunch out west, for instance.)
The economic reckoning pains.
We are going to struggle, economically for a period of time. That's going result in some pain iin the following areas.
The pain's; of realizing how much of the headway we've made on building some civilational sanity has been blown up, but not necessarily killed, by the failure of the character's of those who've stoked the dream of our former partner's exceptionalism.
In this moment:
The loss, quite possibly forever, of some the global institutions Canada was instrumental in creating.
The temporary loss of momentum on some of the world's advancements that we are instrumental in.
The continued destruction of the environment; the people, that want to suck out every last drop of oil and ton of coal, are ahead!
The dissolution of human rights; the people, that want every one who's not white, literally out, dead or subservient, are ahead!
Racism; The people, who think human rights are only for white people, particularly the males, are ahead!
Any human aspiration you care to choose; The people against it, are ahead!
I believe, I have to for my kid's and their kid's, that the road our PM is leading us, and the rest of the middle power's down, will prove to be our best option.
A timely and painful redux. Lloyd, you have done it again. You ask all the questions the adulators have been afraid to ask. What are those precious “Values” at the heart of Mark Carney’s government? Are they based only on economic growth, increased militarism, capitalist expansion and trade? Where is there room for the expansion of human rights based on international law and treaties? Middle powers, in particular, have been in the vanguard of this expansion through their support of peace-keeping, the land mine treaty, the right to protect, the International Criminal Court. Canada has led them in the past. What are we doing now? And when will the Carney government finally introduce a viable strategy to reduce emissions and address the existential issue of climate change? It is high time the Carney government had a conversation with Canadians about “Values”.