By Joanne Archibald

November 4, 2026

Prime Minister Mark Carney is building big. His government is unleashing dollars into defence and shifting the spend from traditional equipment toward drones, AI, and software, alongside like-minded partners such as Ukraine and the European Union. It is bold, but not new.

Seventy years ago, Louis St. Laurent met a Soviet threat over the Arctic with new technology: three radar lines across Canada, built with the Americans: The Pinetree Line, the Mid-Canada Line (a.k.a the McGill Fence) and the DEW Line (Distant Early Warning). Few Canadians remember them today.

That gap in our collective memory isn’t just a trivia-night embarrassment, it’s a lesson in how quickly we forget what we’ve built.

The provision of publicly curated historical context is just one reason historian J.D.M. Stewart and I founded the Prime Ministers Institute, a non-partisan program of the Canadian Institute for Historical Education, which launched on October 30th.

Its purpose is simple: to study the decisions and consequences of the people who’ve led Canada, and to engage Canadians in a discussion about their legacies.

Remarkably, no organization in Canada focuses on this history.

The United States has built impressive presidential libraries and centres where scholars, students, and citizens learn how the presidency has been exercised.

In Britain, the Museum of the Prime Minister was founded in 2023 and is dedicated to the history and legacy of British prime ministers. Its aim is to establish a permanent museum to honour the men and women who have led the United Kingdom.

Canada has nothing comparable for the office that has shaped this country since 1867.

Part of the reason is academic trends. Political history has been pushed to the margins of Canadian scholarship, and the study of leaders has come to seem old-fashioned. The result is what historian Charlotte Gray, a member of our advisory council, calls “national amnesia.”

If the world has learned anything from the recent course of human events, it’s that leaders matter.

Studying Louis St. Laurent taught me that you cannot understand a government without understanding the person leading it. The 1950s radar lines, for example, were not inevitable. They required political agreements, resource negotiations, supply chains, staffing and environmental assessments.

They also depended on St. Laurent’s working relationships with Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Some may say an institute like this risks becoming a hall of fame. Others will worry it will be used to put past leaders on trial. Neither concern is valid.

Other prime ministers felt this same weight: Brian Mulroney built strong relationships with Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush around free trade; Mackenzie King delivered a steady hand with Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill during the Second World War; and Robert Borden negotiated with Britain to ensure Canada had its own seat at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.

St. Laurent also recognized that these relationships required effort. Speaking to American University graduates in 1954, he warned: “It would, I believe, be a mistake to think that the good relations between the United States and Canada are the inevitable result of circumstance; or that they do not need to be cherished, if they are to persist.”

That sentence could easily have been written for a 2026 audience.

Mark Carney is managing a chaotic relationship with Washington, while building new partnerships elsewhere. The lesson is not that history repeats itself, but rather that relationships between leaders are built deliberately. The record of how past prime ministers built them is both illustrative and there to be studied.

Some may say an institute like this risks becoming a hall of fame. Others will worry it will be used to put past leaders on trial. Neither concern is valid. Our work at the Prime Ministers Institute will rest on evidence and balanced analysis of failures as well as achievements.

Our advisory council reflects that spirit. It brings together historians, political scientists, and journalists, along with people who have worked in politics on opposing sides.

The PMI aims to commission research, host public panels, and engage Canadians in informed conversation about the people who have led this country. We will actively seek out partnerships with civic and academic institutions that widen the opportunity for engagement and education.

We start on November 24th in Toronto with a panel on the history and future of 24 Sussex Drive. The home of prime ministers from St. Laurent to Harper, ‘24’ has played a significant and colourful role in our history and identity. What should the new 24 Sussex  look like? What role should an official residence play in Canada’s political ecosystem?

The PMI will count on the support of Canadians who believe in our message of spotlighting the history of our prime ministers and learning from their experiences. In uncertain times, knowing what our leaders have done before is not nostalgia, it’s a blueprint.

For more information on our inaugural event, the Prime Ministers Institute, and how to support our mission, please visit our website.

Joanne Archibald, PhD, is co-founder and director of the Prime Ministers Institute, founder of Livy Consulting, and a fellow at the Centre for International and Defence Policy (CIDP).