Anil Wasif in UN Assembly Hall, September 19, 2025

By Anil Wasif

September 21, 2025

On Friday night inside the United Nations Assembly Hall, the 80th anniversary of the UN was marked with an address from Secretary-General António Guterres. The theme was “a living legacy,” echoed in a short film of the same name chronicling eight decades of the United Nations—from its founding in San Francisco to the fall of the Berlin Wall, through Kyoto and COVID, to the fraught moment we inhabit today.

But as the world’s leaders gather for the high-level week of this 80th session on Tuesday, the mood is less celebratory and more reflective of international tension and uncertainty. The global order built after the Second World War is fraying. Thirty-five years ago, Francis Fukuyama famously declared “the end of history”, positing that Western liberal democracy was the endpoint of our political evolution.

Today, that notion feels like a relic from a more optimistic age. We are now in what the head of McGill’s Max Bell School of Public Policy, Jennifer Welsh aptly calls  “The Return of History”—a new era marked by rising authoritarianism, democratic backsliding, and intensifying geopolitical competition.

This is the turbulent backdrop for UNGA 80. While Friday’s commemoration offered a moment of reflection, next week’s substantive agenda reveals a world grappling with crises on every front: a new Climate Summit, the launch of a Global Dialogue on AI Governance, a meeting on the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration for women’s rights, and the First Biennial Summit for a Sustainable and Resilient Global Economy.

These discussions are not merely procedural; they are a litmus test for a multilateral system under immense strain, facing a liquidity crisis and a decline in transnational trust. Progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has stalled; a recent report by the UN Economic Commission for Europe found that only 17% of targets are on track to be met by 2030.

Enter Prime Minister Mark Carney. Elected in April in what — based on expectations for the governing Liberal Party before he became it’s leader — qualified as a stunning upset, Carney started positioning Canada as a champion of multilateralism, starting from his first visits to Paris and London after being sworn in before the election campaign.

His government has promised a full foreign policy review, the first since 2005, and vows to use Canada’s G7 presidency to “protect the rules-based international order from those who want to destroy it”.

This is a monumental task. A 2023 Carleton University report from an advisory panel co-chaired by Policy contributors Kerry Buck and Michael Manulak concluded that Canada “punches below its historic weight at the UN,” our influence sapped by under-resourced diplomatic missions and weak internal policy coherence.

This decline has its roots in a foreign service that was allowed to “atrophy”. For a decade, from 2009 to 2019, we essentially stopped recruiting foreign service officers, creating a generational gap in our diplomatic corps. Today, our missions in key multilateral hubs such as New York and Geneva remain woefully understaffed compared to our G7 peers, limiting our ability to forge the cross-regional coalitions necessary for influence in a newly multipolar world.

As this 80th General Assembly proceeds, the international community is watching to see whether this moment represents a genuine reset in Canada’s role.

Meanwhile, the global stage has grown more contested. Disruptive powers, notably China and Russia, are actively working to reshape international norms, with the Russian UN delegation stating its goal is to counter the “neocolonial practices of the west” and promote the UN as a coordinating body, free from Western dominance. As a middle power, Canada’s security and prosperity are deeply served by a system where the rule of law trumps a world where “might makes right”.

It is precisely this volatility that will frame Canada’s re-engagement at the UN, starting with our shift in policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, confirmed by Prime Minister Mark Carney Sunday as Canada joined the UK and France in officially recognizing the State of Palestine.

This represents a significant recalibration from Canada’s historically pro-Israel voting record at the UN, which often left us isolated with just a handful of other countries against the global majority on resolutions condemning illegal Israeli settlements, among other subversions of the two-state solution.

Amid an unprecedented escalation in Gaza — from occupation to military assault to siege to what a UN commission of inquiry has now alleged to be genocide — the recognition of Palestine signals a strategic effort to rebuild credibility, particularly with nations in the Global South, whose support is essential for any multilateral agenda.

Beyond specific conflicts, we appear poised to reclaim our historical role as an “agenda maker” rather than an “agenda taker”. For decades, Canadian foreign policy was animated by “middlepowermanship”, a predilection for order-building through international organizations.

From John Humphrey’s principal role in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to Lester Pearson’s role as peacekeeping pioneer, to our championing of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, Canada has been a supplier of ideas.

Now, we are being urged to fill normative gaps on emerging global issues such as artificial intelligence (AI), space, and cybersecurity—areas where Canada has expertise and where international rules are urgently needed. The launch of the UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance this very week presents a timely opportunity for such leadership.

However, good intentions must be backed by tangible commitments. We are a founding UN member and the eighth-largest contributor to its regular budget, but our international assistance lags global benchmarks, and our troop contributions to peacekeeping are now minimal.

Prime Minister Carney has pledged to raise our defence budget to the NATO target of 2% of GDP by 2030 and 5% by 2035, a necessary step to add weight to our diplomatic initiatives. His government has also been advised to modernize the military by investing in new technologies, including AI and drones, expand our diplomatic footprint, and invest in the “soft power” of strategic thinking by bolstering the country’s chronically underfunded think tanks.

As this 80th General Assembly proceeds, the international community is watching to see if this moment represents a genuine reset in Canada’s role. In an era of escalating crises and eroding trust, the world needs principled, pragmatic middle powers to act as bridge-builders.

By pursuing an interest-based multilateralism, backed by the necessary resources and a coherent national strategy, Canada has the opportunity not only to restore our own global standing but to help fortify the very institutions upon which our collective security and prosperity depend. The challenges are real, but for a world teetering on the edge of disorder, the effort is essential.

Policy Columnist Anil Wasif is a public servant in the Ontario government. He serves on the University of Toronto’s Governing Council and the Advisory Board of McGill’s Max Bell School. Internationally, he serves on the OECD’s Infrastructure Delivery Committee and the World Bank Economic Development Institute’s Community of Practice. He co-owns and manages the Canada-born global non-profit BacharLorai. The views expressed are his own.