By Patrick Lennox

June 29, 2025

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government is embracing unprecedented infrastructure investment as a defining policy priority. It wants to build infrastructure and defence material at a pace not seen before in this country. But as important as building is, it’s time for Canada to “think, baby, think” as well.

In the past 80 years, Canada’s comfortable position in North America, allied to the world’s liberal beacon and strongest economic and military power, meant we didn’t have as many big choices to make as we might have had otherwise. This trend accelerated when the Cold War ended. We gladly tied our fortunes to the United States as the sole hegemonic power and largely let Washington decide how to advance and defend the rules-based international order, hoping that history had indeed come to an end.

This was great while it lasted. Our economy prospered; we were able to contribute to global security on the cheap; we focused on domestic issues and made mostly rhetorical contributions to causes such as the fight against climate change. We didn’t need to spend much time defining our national interests or how to position ourselves in an increasingly unstable world. We trusted that a benevolent United States would handle the big questions and lead the way for us.

Since taking office for a second time, President Donald Trump upended the foundations we as Canadians took for granted. But a few things are certain. The continental economic integration that so benefitted us looks not just tenuous, but a source of real vulnerability. American benevolence toward Canada can no longer be assumed. The rules-based international order is giving way to a new era of great power rivalries, spheres of influence and a ‘might makes right’ mentality.

In this dark new reality, Canada needs to think rapidly and in an integrated and comprehensive fashion about its foreign, defence, security and aid policies. While calls for policy reviews are relatively commonplace, this is different. Canada critically needs a grand strategic rethink, which would enable us to chart a clear course through the chaos of President Trump’s world (dis)order.

This process can only begin by coming to grips with what Trump’s second term means for the future of American democracy, the future of the Canada-US relationship, and the future of the international system. Until we establish a clear and consistent view on these interdependent issues, our foreign, defence, security and aid policy responses will remain ad hoc, inconsistent, and dependent.  We will not be able to chart an independent course in the world.

Prime Minister Carney hinted at this on the campaign trail when he said there’s no going back to the old relationship with the United States. He was more explicit at the Munk Centre this month when he said “a new imperialism threatens”.

In this dark new reality, Canada needs to think rapidly and in an integrated and comprehensive fashion about its foreign, defence, security and aid policies.

Being in denial about America’s authoritarian turn and what that means for Canada-US relations and world order won’t help us.  We need to start defining our interests and building sovereign capability in a way that sends clear signals to allies and adversaries alike about who we are as a nation and how we will position ourselves in the world.

The Carney government has taken initial steps in this direction. It is attempting to lessen our dependence on the United States through strengthened military and economic ties with Europe. Ottawa will soon be publishing a Canadian defence industrial strategy as well, which will ideally help develop sovereign Canadian capacities in key areas. These initial efforts are laudable, and in retrospect, we should have been positioning ourselves for this since the first Trump presidency.

It is attempting to lessen our dependence on the United States through strengthened defence, security and economic ties with Europe.  The signing this week of the Security and Defence Partnership with the European Union is a major milestone in this regard as it seeks to deepen cooperation on a spectrum of critical security and defence issues of both traditional and emergent varieties and to do so in a way that is grounded in international law and the UN Charter.

But we need to be bolder.

We need to consider major state adaptations based on new understandings of our altered security environment. These may involve the creation of new departments and agencies, and new information sharing pathways and authorities across the existing ones. But what is certain is that the Canadian state must be oriented by a collective calculous of how to pursue its interests at home in North America, and abroad.

An early example of this kind of adaptation is the move of the Canadian Coast Guard out from under the Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans to National Defence. Whether this means the Coast Guard will become an armed force is unclear at this point, but it does suggest it will take on a security posture, and it shows the Carney government is looking to challenge the status quo when it comes to the Canadian state apparatus.

Among myriad other pressing matters, a strategic rethink may conclude that Canada must build a stand-alone, federal police force capable of effectively combating the vast range of national security threats we face today. Distinguished from the frontline or contract policing service of the RCMP, this new specialized federal police force might recruit, train, report and promote separately, and seek to join Canada’s allied federal police services on equal footing in terms of tools, techniques, authorities, and skills.

It may lead us to establish a foreign clandestine intelligence service, so that we are no longer so dependent on our Five Eyes partners. It may force us to consider what our foreign aid policy will look like in a world where the United States is cutting off funding to the most vulnerable.

A Canadian strategic rethink need not be a protracted effort involving a royal commission led by a well-worn establishment figure. Rather it should be time-limited, spearheaded by a new generation of thinkers, and focused on concrete proposals, not the usual lip service. It needs to be integrated across departmental lines and tied to government’s public service reform. Importantly, the review should not tolerate sacred cows or assume that the world will go back to where it was once Mr. Trump leaves office.

Patrick Lennox worked in Canada’s federal security and intelligence community for 16 years. He is the author of At Home and Abroad: The Canada-US Relationship and Canada’s Place in the World, and co-editor of An Independent Foreign Policy for Canada? Challenges and Choices for the Future. He was the Liberal Party candidate in Edmonton Griesbach in the 2025 federal election.