Prime Minister Mark Carney in Davos, January 20, 2026/World Economic Forum image

As chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Policy Contributing Writer Peter M. Boehm has held regular email Q&As with Policy Editor Lisa Van Dusen for the past five years. This is their post-Davos 2026 edition.

Lisa Van Dusen: Senator, let’s cut to the chase: What did you think of Mark Carney’s Davos speech?

Sen. Peter Boehm: It was one of the most consequential speeches on foreign policy ever made by a Canadian prime minister. In terms of its importance within and to Canada, I concur with former UN ambassador Bob Rae in his Policy piece and compare it to Louis St Laurent’s Gray Lecture at the University of Toronto in 1947. While St Laurent only became prime minister a year later, his speech as then Secretary of State for External Affairs set out Canada’s policy parameters for the then new multilateralism, particularly with respect to the nascent United Nations and the expansion of the foreign service through the Department of External Affairs.

St Laurent’s speech received scant international attention. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech, in contrast, garnered much attention, both domestic and international, for its daring, erudite bluntness (pundits immediately started googling Thucydides), its timing and its post-delivery riposte from President Donald Trump.

Carney spoke on behalf of middle powers, the traditional ones like Canada and European countries, but also those who are emerging in their own right. He decried the moves by the hegemons to monetize their relationships that would lead to “a world of fortresses” that “will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable,”

He adroitly invoked Václav Havel’s “lie within a lie,” the shopkeepers’ “Workers of the World Unite” sign in the window that was there as part of a ritual of obedience to autocratic communism until it was not.

Carney said, “We aim to be principled and pragmatic.” St. Laurent said the same thing but for a different time. Canada’s much-vaunted “functional principle” in seeing its global role now will include “variable geometry”, smaller partnerships and alliances where they make sense, and a concerted approach when warranted, per the line: “When we negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness…this is not sovereignty. It’s the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.”

After almost eight decades since St. Laurent’s speech, Carney has provided a bookend with his name on it.

LVD: The speech seemed to not only position Carney as the leader of a “plurilateralist” world order in the making, but also, via the venue, leaned into his credentials as a policy leader, especially economic policy in that room — i.e. I’m not a tourist here, I functioned at the highest level of global policy discussion and implementation. Some of the most crucial moments of your career have been spent dealing with the question of prime ministerial leadership in a range of clinches. How valuable do you think Carney’s credentials are?

SPB: What makes Mark Carney unique among our prime ministers, other than Lester Pearson, is that he came into office with a background that already placed him at the top of the international policy learning curve on his first day. In addition, he had the advantage of having a comprehensive contact list in international finance and politics. He has already received more international media ink than any of his predecessors for those reasons. He was a known commodity at that level for years.

Our other prime ministers knew the value of World Economic Forum participation for purposes of deal making and extending Canada’s interests and influence. As Prime Minister Carney said, “If you are not at the table you are on the menu.” He chose to use this venue to deliver a strategic policy speech.

In a sense, and given the volatility of world events, he has set out the framework for Canadian policy, perhaps even obviating the need for a foreign policy review — which, as we’ve seen from other major policy frameworks in recent years, would likely be overtaken by events much sooner than was once the case regardless.

Some pundits and members of the opposition have rightfully praised the speech for its quality and purpose but have also suggested that now is the time to show how this novel approach can be operationalized at a time when the public and foreign service is being cut. I think Prime Minister Carney is doing this in practice, but “plurilateralism” — if that is what is being contemplated in “creating a dense web of connections” — needs to be explained more fully at home.

In the political sphere in Canada, we need to be careful not to fall prey to “tall poppy syndrome,” that is our inherent default to criticizing anyone, particularly a leader, for attracting too much attention. I think the timing and the venue for this speech were cleverly chosen in terms of securing the attention of other middle powers, the global media and, of course, Canadians. It was a leadership moment that could simply not have been achieved by giving such a speech at a summit or in the House of Commons. Timing is everything.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s post-speech Q&A with Financial Times Columnist Gideon Rachman/X

LVD: The contrast with Donald Trump’s speech was both predictable and withering (for Trump). On the substance, you were at Charlevoix in 2018 when the US delegation insisted on removing the reference to the rules-based international order from the communiqué even before Trump’s Air Force One tweet grenade. Did it feel like the other shoe dropped in the Swiss Alps this week?

SPB: Donald Trump’s speech and later flip-flop on his Greenland intentions ironically served to underscore the points made by Mark Carney the day before. Ambivalence, ambiguity, and often outright hostility with respect to international norms, treaties and the multilateral system have characterized the second Trump administration. The insults, blatantly incorrect facts directed at friends, allies, hosts alike, both in the Davos speech and on Truth Social add spice and incredulity to the charged international environment.

The debate in the negotiation of the G7 Charlevoix Summit Communiqué in 2018 centred on the collective wish to promote “the rules-based international order.” The Americans didn’t like “the” so it became an “a” in the first paragraph but “the” was retained in the remainder of the document. It was an excellent example of the power of words and a  Pyrrhic victory (right up there with Thucydides).

If there was another shoe dropped at Davos, it was by Prime Minister Carney in calling the international rules-based order a fiction. This is the bookend again. Canada’s traditional policy goes back to the “functional principle” (I have written about that in Policy) that basically asserted for decades that there was a role for middle powers commensurate with their economic, defence and foreign policy strengths in the multilateral system. Canada stepped up (peacekeeping, anti-apartheid action, landmines) as did others.

Yet the great powers took the big decisions with impunity, eschewing the United Nations Security Council, international law, norms and customs. Current examples include Ukraine, Venezuela and the developing “Board of Peace” for Gaza, chaired by Donald Trump. So why continue to cling to what is increasingly a fiction? The hard-working diplomats at Global Affairs will need to change gears as our slavish devotion to referencing the international rules-based order at every opportunity over the past few years will no longer hold.

LVD: Would it be inappropriate to have a celebration of life for the dead rules-based order? I’m a little confused about how to mark this occasion because until recently, it was the thing we were supposedly trying to protect from Donald Trump.

SPB: There’s a scene in Monty Python’s Holy Grail where, as the plague wagon passes with the call of ‘bring out your dead’, one fellow being loaded on keeps protesting: “I’m not dead!!.” That is the case with the international multilateral system. It is easy to look at both the UN and regional organizations in political terms while ignoring the practical functionality aspects.

I am thinking particularly of the UN specialized agencies. The world is still going to require a World Food Program, a Civil Aviation authority, Food and Agriculture Organization, World Health Organization and the like even without the active funding and participation of the United States. The interconnected world needs norms and standards, technical regulation and development cooperation. Institutions will still be required.

The Bretton Woods international financial system has so far been left unscathed. Interestingly, it and international financial markets represent the Achilles heel (going Greek again) to Trump’s erratic ambitions, whether on “Liberation Day” when tariffs on many countries (including some unpopulated territories) were announced or as the coveting of Greenland became clearer.

Bond markets talk: it is perhaps the only language that Trump fears and he knows that Carney understands. My sense is that the “coalition of the willing” model will also come into play to deal with the “rupture” of the international system. Rules-based systems have developed since the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the creation of the International Postal Union in 1874, the League of Nations in 1919, and the UN in 1945. There has been evolution since, and change may very well accelerate. Death? No. But things will certainly be chaotic for a while.

Senator Peter M Boehm is a former ambassador and deputy minister. Among his various assignments, he has served as minister at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, in Ottawa as Assistant Deputy Minister for North America, and as Canada’s Sherpa for six G7 Summits.

Policy Editor and Publisher Lisa Van Dusen has served as Washington bureau chief for Sun Media, Washington Columnist for the Ottawa Citizen, international writer for Peter Jennings at ABC News, and as an editor at AP National in New York and UPI in Washington.