By Bob Rae

February 6, 2026

The speech heard round the world has had much impact.

Mark Carney’s message to Canadians and everyone else has been widely quoted, lauded, analyzed, criticized and described as the most important speech on Canadian foreign policy since Louis St. Laurent’s Grey Lecture at the University of Toronto in 1947.

In discussing the speech this week with Ben Rowswell, former Canadian Ambassador to Venezuela, at an event at the Bill Graham Centre in Toronto, we were both asked to reflect on the meaning and significance of Prime Minister Carney’s Davos speech. My answer — borrowed from Chou En Lai’s famous comment about the impact of the French Revolution — “It’s too early to tell”.

Few people remember St. Laurent’s lecture, or the exact words of George Marshall’s famous Harvard Commencement lecture announcing his plan for the salvation of peace, security and prosperity in Western Europe.

What they remember is the implementation of the plans created by the generation that made the new order happen, starting with the United Nations and the foundation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the negotiation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and the emergent structures of a more united Europe.

Decolonization and the expansion of the democratic, humanitarian, human rights, and development systems would follow over next several decades. In short, we know many parts of this order are being repudiated by the Trump administration and other countries embracing national selfishness, authoritarianism and aggression as entirely healthy and rational.

At this point, there is no explanation as to what will replace them, what the new power structures will be, how those new structures will work, and what rooms and furniture can be saved from all the building and implementation that has gone on since 1945.

As for the International Court of Justice, the International Red Cross, and many other institutions that have kept order to the extent that international cooperation possibly could (like the International Telecommunications Union — better known as the ITU — dating back to the nineteenth century), the society that has been served by that order remains in the dark.

The now-infamous Trump administration National Security Strategy, released in December of 2025, was followed a few weeks later by the invasion of Venezuela, in which over a hundred people were killed, and the Presidency of Venezuela was decapitated when President Maduro and his wife were captured and forcibly taken to New York City to stand trial for a range of alleged offences that have yet to be proven in any court.

President Trump, it should be remembered, made little reference to those charges at the press conference called as these events were unfolding in front of our eyes. His focus was on two points: “We are running Venezuela” and “we are running the oil industry”.

Any illusion that the sole purpose of this attack and capture was to embrace the rule of law and take the steps to return Venezuela to a democratic path disappeared the moment the President opened his mouth. Not shock and awe; shock and awful.

In particular, the diplomats I’ve spoken with want Canada to remember not only traditional allies and the ‘like-minded’, but the whole human family that in many ways is barely included in much of the thinking, actions, and analysis going on these days.

Then came the next phase in the implementation of the DonRoeDoctrine (so coined by the President at that same press conference, perhaps not thinking through the double meaning of the word “Don”), was the bumbling attempt to take over Greenland. Trump’s intentions for that plan remain murky, although not entirely abandoned.

Those who say “TACO” are counting their chickens too soon.

The obsequious NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte may have managed to calm his “Daddy” for the moment, and the response of the Danes and their allies pushed back hard, but there is no written document that tells us the exact the plan for Greenland and its people, or Arctic security more broadly, while maintaining the sovereignty and independence of all parties.

“America First” cannot mean throwing the rest of us under the bus.

Based on the three principles of life Donald Trump learned from Joseph McCarthy acolyte Roy Cohn — attack, attack, attack; never apologize; and whatever happens, claim victory — brilliantly described in the film The Apprentice, the Venezuela and Greenland capers are living up to that scenario. That all this has more in common with Mafia principles than moral principles is something we must not lose sight of.

Prime Minister Carney’s Davos Speech is more of a necessary wake-up call than an actual plan. It described more honestly than most what is actually happening in the world. The “rules- based order” is broken. Great powers (the hegemons) have only the power we actually cede to them, and middle powers should do everything they can to stop paying tribute and start coordinating efforts to create a more predictable, and livable, world. “Nostalgia is not a strategy”.

After further reflection about the speech, a visit to the UN for ECOSOC meetings, and feedback from many, I would make two points.

The first is the need to be clear about what is it we are trying to save, and what is it we want to build. We must not conclude that the rule of law, at home and internationally, is irrelevant, or that the institutions we have sacrificed so much to build are best left dead and buried in the age of untrammelled power politics. That vision must be maintained at all costs.

I go back to the well one more time — Pascal’s famous conclusion that while justice without force is powerless, it is vital to remember that the exercise of power without justice should actually be called tyranny, still holds, which is why the constant effort to define and to enforce the rule of law locally (that means you, Toronto Police), nationally, and internationally is essential for the protection of our rights and our security.

Many diplomats I’ve spoken with expressed strong support for the Davos speech, but wanted greater clarity on this last point. They also wanted to know “what’s next”? They said it not as a criticism but as a strong desire to participate in the processes that would lead to the implementation of a plan.

In particular, the diplomats I’ve spoken with want Canada to remember not only traditional allies and the “like-minded”, but the whole human family that in many ways is barely included in much of the thinking, action, and analysis going on these days.

This is not something Prime Minister Carney and his team can do by themselves. It requires leadership, and he is doing that. But leadership requires followers, a willingness to intensify the dialogue both with Canadians and countries around the world, and the actual steps needed to make change real and not just an aspiration.

He will need the full engagement of the public service, civil society, the premiers, in short — far more people than seem to be involved at the moment. There has to be much listening and negotiation. And then there has to be execution, always allowing for a response to the feedback loop that is an essential part of making any plan work.

Louis St Laurent’s speech was an appeal to Canadians to stay the course on international engagement, and not to retreat to the isolationism of the inter-war years that left us poorly prepared for the pain and suffering of World War II.

The wiliness of the ultimate political survivor, William Lyon Mackenzie King, of whom Frank Scott famously said “Never do by half what you can do by quarters”, was not sufficient to do justice to the generation that had sacrificed their lives in the defence of freedom.

We need to dig deep into our past to remind a new generation of Canadians why the world is as turbulent as it is, the nature of the forces that stand in our way, and the path ahead. Put simply, we need to agree on what to keep from the last 80 years, what to change, and what to discard.

I shall make my own contributions to this discussion in the time ahead. There’s much listening, and much explaining, that still needs to be done. As that most eloquent of Canadians, Thomas D’Arcy McGee said, only a few years after making Canada his home, “We are in the rapids and we must go on”.

Policy Contributing Writer Bob Rae teaches and writes on law and public policy. He is a Fellow of Massey College, the Munk School at the University of Toronto, the Forum of Federations and Queen’s University. He served as Ontario’s 21st Premier, interim leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, and Canada’s Ambassador to the UN.