By Esnold Jure

September 6, 2026

As Canada strives to carve out a more influential place in a rapidly evolving global system, having a more articulate presence in Latin America and the Caribbean — one that serves well-defined purposes — would be a significant economic and strategic boost for Ottawa.

For the better part of the last two decades, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), as a geostrategic region, has gradually lost priority in Canada’s foreign policy.

Unlike Europe and Asia, which capture Ottawa’s attention and get regular policy strategy updates, or Africa, with last year’s Canada’s Africa Strategy, the last Canadian strategic document for the Americas dates back to 2006.

As a G7 and NATO member, strengthening ties with Europe and Asia is essential to defending and advancing Canada’s national security interests. But at a time when Canadian statecraft is marshalled to boost resilience and turn Canada into a more consequential middle power, this strategy risks being undermined if Canada remains a peripheral actor in its own hemisphere.

As Washington raises the cost for LAC governments engaging with non-aligned powers, while increasingly framing its hemispheric relations through security and U.S.-China competition, Canada has an opportunity to reposition itself in the region by outlining a coherent strategy to capitalize on this moment.

Agenda Setter to Peripheral Actor

Despite longstanding diplomatic, economic, and cultural relations with many LAC countries, Canada did not join the Organization of American States (OAS) until 1990, and other regional bodies even later. But upon formal integration, Canada acted as a prominent hemispheric actor with a regional strategy.

It played a significant role in promoting democracy and trade liberalization, including an attempt to expand NAFTA into a regional free trade agreement (FTA). And when negotiations failed, Canada pursued bilateral cooperation with LAC countries, signing nine FTAs between 1997 and 2014.

At its peak, Canada-LAC relations included several prime ministerial and cabinet-level visits to the region, and Canadian investment in LAC grew substantially from the 1990s through the late 2000s. Despite this momentum, including growing two-way trade, Latin America and the Caribbean gradually lost priority in Ottawa’s foreign policy agenda from the second half of the 2010s onward.

This decline — epitomized by fewer high-level visits, shrinking financial footprints, stagnation of investment, and zero new FTAs–has in turn eroded Canada’s influence and standing in the region.

A Global Affairs Canada report concurred that while Canada has leveraged substantial diplomatic, trade, and development capabilities in the region, those efforts lacked the organizational coherence to elevate Canada’s status among regional partners or communicate in one voice.

 

Solution-Driven Strategy

Realistically, Canada cannot replace the major Chinese investments in infrastructure projects that have enlarged Beijing’s footprint in the region, nor should it try to rival the U.S.’s revival of the Monroe Doctrine with a doctrinal alternative.

Canada’s comparative advantage lies in leveraging Canadian capabilities: technical expertise, institutional, financial, and diplomatic assets to build partnerships and provide solutions where regional need is growing.

Canadian investments and savoir-faire have a long and well-documented presence in Latin America and collaboration on critical minerals is also expanding, especially in light of the Chinese export restrictions imposed in spring 2025. But a Canadian strategy for LAC should go beyond these flagship projects. It should identify where other regional needs at all levels — national, subnational, and the private sector — intersect with Canadian capabilities and strategic goals and provide pathways to foster multi-level partnerships and deliver practical solutions on critical issues.

For example, several LAC countries launched the Agencia Latinoamericana y Caribeña del Espacio, ALCE — a multilateral space agency — in a bid to make the region a key protagonist in the space industry. ALCE’s mission includes coordinating cooperation in space technology, research, and exploration to enhance the region’s capabilities in areas such as Earth observation, security, surveillance, and exploration of natural resources.

Canada is a global leader in the space industry, with the capabilities to respond to ALCE-identified needs. A Canada-LAC strategy should therefore position Canada as a partner of choice for ALCE and ensure that Canadian industries are aligned to provide both upstream and downstream services that the region needs to meet its goals.

The opportunities for greater Canada-LAC engagement extend well beyond the space industry. The region is still confronted with serious issues that threaten its growth, such as the lack of quality education and healthcare. A Canada-LAC strategy should also outline how to mobilize Canadian innovation and capital to partner with regional governments and private sectors t address these challenges.

Strategic Dividends

Canada already plays an important role in advancing regional stability and development. It is a lead actor in the current effort to stabilize Haiti, is the second-largest financier of the OAS, and contributes over a billion dollars in development aid annually. What it lacks, though, is a central theory of what these efforts should achieve for Canada and for LAC partners. That deficit also makes it harder to show the domestic population or that of partner countries the value of Canadian engagements. A LAC strategy would respond to both challenges by offering Canada an overarching framework around which to craft and conduct trade and diplomatic efforts while offering partners a tool to recognize the value of Canadian regional endeavors.

Beyond strengthening its diplomatic profile in the region, a Canadian strategy for Latin America and the Caribbean would also help identify new economic opportunities and pathways for involvement, in coordination with Canada’s broader strategic objectives. Despite the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement, CUSMA, which has allowed Canada to have a strong relationship with Mexico and Brazil being Canada’s largest non-CUSMA hemispheric trade partner, the three countries cooperate substantially below their potential.

With current efforts to recalibrate relationships with Brazil and Mexico underway, and the potential for a Canada-Mercosur FTA, a Canadian LAC strategy would not only ensure cohesion across Canada’s political, economic, and development diplomacy, it would also allow policymakers to elaborate a clear theory of success, linking all policy streams for real-time assessments and alignment with Canada’s broader global objectives.

With a population size of nearly 675 million people, a growing middle class, strong people-to-people ties, and at a time when both Canada and the region are seeking greater resilience, elevating LAC as a strategic region in the diversification efforts is both timely and worthwhile.

A New Global Reach

Strategically, deploying the means to secure and advance Canadian interests in the region would also benefit Canada’s global image. Canada’s many strides to close strategic gaps, bolster economic resilience, and speak its own voice on the global stage are starting to pay off.

For the first time in years, foreign capitals  are turning to Ottawa for signals and inspiration in the face of an unravelling international environment, where hedging is increasingly impermissible. Yet, a strategic posture built to project strength globally while neglecting one’s own region is not sustainable.

Demonstrating leadership, reliability, and competitiveness at home, in the Americas, will send a clear signal to other regions that Canada is indeed ready to play an important role.

A credible hemispheric strategy, built to leverage Canadian capabilities to develop strategic partnerships and solve concrete problems would both advance Canada’s quest to reduce economic vulnerability and reinforce its middle power message.

In an era of increased great-power rivalry, where greater ties also mean greater exposure to coercion , true resilience will not necessarily come from one or two multi-billion-dollar trade deals with one or two global players. It will come from a web of strategic relationships with large- and medium-sized economies that, alone, seem negligible, but in aggregate, provide significant commercial and strategic options.

Most importantly, Canada already has the instruments, the knowledge, and the capabilities operating in Latin America and the Caribbean. The task is to move from the seemingly atelic engagements of the past two decades to a strategically coherent regional plan by leveraging these existing instruments to develop valuable partnerships and provide practical solutions to the challenges the region faces in a way that is both economically and strategically beneficial

Esnold Jure is a research fellow with Search for Common Ground and a former legislative fellow at the U.S. House of Representatives. His research and analysis focus on governance, security, and international affairs. He holds a Master of Public Policy degree from George Washington University.