The following is the full text of former United Nations Ambassador Bob Rae’s keynote at the Massey College conference, “A Changed America: How Should Canada and the World Respond?” 

January 27, 2026

I was quick to accept this kind invitation because I have been an active student of American politics and the dynamics of the Canada/US relationship since living in Washington DC between 1956 and 1962, where I attended public and junior high schools in those years.

I was knocked out of a Scripps Howard spelling bee because I couldn’t spell the word “indictment”, a mistake I suspect no 12-year-old would make today.

I was a fan of the Washington Senators, who in those days were known as “First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League”.  This meant that the Blue Jays win over the Yankees this year for the American League pennant was especially sweet.

I also was a paper boy for all three papers at different times, the Washington Daily News, the Washington Star and the Washington Post. I think back on those days particularly at this time of year, because in those days we would always enjoy offering calendars to our customers, and await expectantly for a Christmas tip.

Both Richard Nixon and Estes Kefauver were subscribers, and I can only say that the Democrat was a much bigger tipper.

That might have contributed to my growing awareness of the differences between political parties.

It was an exciting time to live in the city, with the growing civil rights movement, the integration of the public school system, and of course the election of President Kennedy in 1960.

It is precisely because of those experiences that it is so difficult to see the United States taking itself on a path that is so completely different from the spirit of a relationship that has proven so beneficial to both our countries.

Writing more than 75 years ago on the island of Jura, George Orwell famously described in his last great novel “1984”, a dystopian, totalitarian world where Big Brother knew our every word, and even our thoughts, where large power blocs suddenly switched alliances and the world was in an endless, perpetual war, where “the proles” lived in dreary poverty and even the quest for a private love affair led to betrayal and doom.

At the time Orwell’s book was seen as brilliant attack on Communism, and was adopted by conservative commentators as an attack on the excessive state power that was a constant risk even in societies that saw themselves as free.

We now live in an age where some people seem to think that Orwell was writing a guidebook on how politics should in fact work, where propaganda, surveillance and political lying are widespread, where the clear objective of social media outlets and the people who own them is to create such disinformation and confusion that the very idea of truth is denied.

At the time that Orwell was writing this book, which he made clear was written as a warning, and not as a “how to”, the world had just come together at the end of World War II to try and build a stronger system of laws, rules, and norms that would protect us from the same fate as had enveloped the world since 1914 – a world of conflict, aggression, economic crashes and depressions, high tariffs, colonialism and empire, and deep poverty for billions of people.

The creation of both the League of Nations in 1919 and the United Nations in 1945 were an expression of the desire for the better co-ordination of national efforts to keep peace and to encourage more co-operation in international development. Both have foundered because of design flaws and the refusal of countries to co-operate enough to build stronger institutions together.

The French philosopher Blaise Pascale put it this way in a famous paradox “Justice without force is powerless; but force without justice is tyranny.”

The values and aspirations of the UN, and of the web of international laws and conventions we have been building for generations, are weak because they do not have enough force behind them. And the power that many world leaders, states, and corporations are today taking for themselves are more like tyranny than democracy because they do not accept the higher power of law and justice, they do not apply it to their own conduct, and they undermine any efforts to make laws effective.

As we speak today, there are more than 140 million displaced and dispossessed people in the world – the highest number since the end of World War II -caused both by an unprecedented number of conflicts, and a rapidly changing climate which is forcing people off land which is no longer arable. In dealing with the epidemic of homelessness in our own country we need to keep our eyes on those who are without shelter around the world.

In other key areas of public policy  the shared challenge is that attempts to rein in the exercise of raw power – to put the law and justice above us all – are still not succeeding,  and we pay a huge price for that failure – in the realm of trade regulation, where the pursuit of protectionism is trumping the concept of freer and fairer trade on climate change where we are seeing a steady retreat from key agreements to, first, agree to measure carbon emissions, and second, to agree to a timetable to reduce the.

We are seeing backsliding on both, because climate change denial is once again pushing back against agreed targets and timetables. We are behind in the international regulation of AI and what it means for a safer digital universe. The social media cesspool is getting more polluted and the fight for truth is more challenging than ever.

We also face, at home and everywhere, the fight against an economic inequality that is becoming even more exaggerated and perverse. The rising tide is not lifting all boats. We may be on the verge of having the world’s first trillionaire. But we are also seeing the chasm of inequality widen as we fail to close the gap and provide a basic minimum for everyone.

The weakness of the United Nations is not an accident. It stems directly from the decisions that countries made in 1945 to protect their sovereignty, and to make collective security voluntary. To the vetoes of the five permanent members must be added two other vetoes – the first and most important being the ability of countries to determine their own level of commitment. And second, the veto that is the level of deterrence (nuclear, the balance of terror, the unpredictability of what can be unleashed) each global actor can exercise.

These are not to be found in the UN Charter – but they have created a dynamic where the UN and other multilateral institutions designed to create peace and security are only as strong or weak as we choose to make them. The success or failure of the UN or any other international institution is the responsibility of the member states who signed up to support them.

Tyrants hold sway if we fail to describe them for what they are, and fail to respond to them.  Equally negative are the little voices inside our heads telling us to find ways to “just get along” and “don’t make waves”.

Peace is not just the absence of conflict. It is also the presence of security, the active sense that justice is with us, and that the bullies will be dealt with. Peace requires architecture, institutions, sources of protection, just as surely as war requires planning, logistics, strategy and armaments in order to have a chance of success. We have had to learn the difficult lesson that giving in to aggression, seeking to accommodate dictators, is actually no guarantee of peace. Submission only buys time. It does not buy peace.

Canadian soldier diplomat and poet Douglas LePan, a former Senior Fellow of this College, described the importance of the courage of his generation in facing down evil, as he memorably put it in “Dancing in the Dark”

• And without a core of courage how can anything be achieved, can anything be built ? And courage shadowed by weakness may be the most precious of all since it carries sweetness into the heart of the building, carries it like honey into the hollows of the honeycomb”

Canada is not a superpower. But we are not powerless, as the Prime Minister pointed out in his speech in Davos last week. The particular and difficult challenge we face today in dealing with global challenges is that we no longer have the United States as a reliable partner.  I can well remember the week in February of 2025 when the United States voted against Canada, Ukraine, and a majority of UN members from around the world, and with Russia, Belarus, North Korea and other authoritarian countries. In a memo to the government I called it “the week the world turned upside down”.  It was not a moment of rapture.  It was a moment of rupture.

The Trump government has not only slashed its own funding for global assistance, it has also abandoned support for the fight against climate change, support for women’s rights, science based policies on health, vaccines and dealing with global epidemics. The list is long. We gain nothing by failing to understand the pain this abandonment is causing on a daily basis.

Canada must not in any way join in this shortsighted departure from the global fight for sustainability, solidarity and a world where the pursuit of prosperity, security and human rights are not seen as some kind of globalist conspiracy.

We now find ourselves at a moment when the policy of “America First” has led to an effort to destroy the logic of shared goals, not only in our bilateral relationship, but in our global relationships as well.

Every country has the right to pursue its own interests. The words “America First” should cause us no pain. After all, one of Wilfrid Laurier sayings “Canada First, Canada Last, and Canada Always.” His fellow Canadians would have expected no less. But Laurier also reminded us that faith is better than doubt and love is better than hate. In 100 BC, Rabbi Hillel put it this way, “If I am not for myself then who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when? Putting our own interests first cannot mean that we ignore the interests and views of others.

Life is not just a series of transactions, in which every deal is calculated by who wins and who loses on any given day.  It is about building relationships, trust, common ground. It is about appreciating the history and values of others. It is about building unity not on the basis of imperial power alone but by recognizing why laws and institutions are important.

In describing the relationship between Canada and the United States, President Kennedy said these well known words when he visited Canada in 1961:

“Geography has made us neighbours. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And Necessity has made us allies. Those who nature has so joined together let no man put asunder.”

He also said:

“We are allies. This is a partnership, and not an empire. We are bound to have differences and disappointments – and we are equally bound to bring them out into the open, to settle them where they can be settled and to respect each other’s views when they cannot be settled.”

In 1987 President Reagan, following the passage of a public law by Congress, proclaimed July 2 and 3rd as “United States and Canada – days of Peace and Friendship.”  In that proclamation he wrote:

“Canada is the closest friend and ally of the United States” and went on to observe that the two countries share such common ideals as “freedom, democracy, human rights, justice and an ardent desire for a peaceful world…both our countries have accepted immigrants from around the world and our cultures have been strengthened thereby”.

It is impossible to reflect on these global challenges and our own bilateral history with the United States and not realize that we are facing a completely different United States government than the one we encountered under President Kennedy and President Reagan, indeed any other President since 1932.

Just a few months ago I was sitting in the United Nations listening to statements from the Trump administration emphasizing that the United States would never agree to anything that limited state sovereignty. He also told the delegates sitting in the hall that our countries were “going to hell”.

This assertion — echoing the recent use of sovereignty as a fig leaf by autocratic states to justify a multitude of sins against international law and, most ironically, other sovereign countries — ignores the reality that any treaty or agreement signed, whether bilateral or multilateral, is such a limitation.

Donald Trump’s recent iteration of the executive-branch ritual of delivering a National Security Strategy (NSS) to Congress reimagines America’s role as the one “indispensable nation” – thus taking the notion of American “exceptionalism” to absurd heights – and rejected the foundational treaties of the postwar multilateral order as a grievous error that “lashed American policy to a network of international institutions, some of which are driven by outright anti-Americanism and many by a transnationalism that explicitly seeks to dissolve individual state sovereignty.”

American policy was not “lashed” to anything that America did not agree to.  In fact the United States was indeed an indispensable part of the creation of the post war order. “Transnationalism” is a recognition that some problems — like pandemics, climate change, security and any number of issues — cannot be solved within or by one country alone.

That key vision was behind the Atlantic Charter signed by Roosevelt and Churchill in the summer of 1941 off the coast of Newfoundland and then by allies like Canada after the attack on Pearl Harbor.  It has been the basis of all American policy since that time, up until the rupture presided over by President Trump.

The Trump presidency has been generating a firehose of disinformation and propaganda designed to bamboozle its fellow citizens and accelerate the degradation of the very nation whose interests it claims to represent.

National Security Strategy is a misnomer on all counts: it is not about America’s national interest, it is about Trumpism, pure and simple. It will not enhance the country’s security but will rather weaken it. It is not even a strategy; it is, at best a tactical blueprint for how to diminish America.

As a description of what America wants, this NSS lists many things that any government would want for its people – jobs, trade, and security – without also mentioning the words “law”, “democracy”, or “human rights”. It gives a nod, curiously, to “soft power” without mentioning the role played by all of these values in pursuing that goal, or the fact that every other expression of American goals and interests in the world since the end of the Cold War has put these concepts front and centre.

There are two competing narratives in this document. The first is the theme of “America First”. Everything must be done with American interests first and foremost, with all relationships being defined by self-interest and self-promotion.

The terrible irony is that Trump is actually diminishing American power, not amplifying it. China’s global trade surplus is made larger  by the narrow and stoneware isolationism of Trump’s tariff war. There is a grim warning to every country in this document: Do as we want or you will be punished.

Since this strategy was released six weeks ago, we see its meaning for Venezuela, Greenland, and our NATO partner Denmark. We have seen this week that by standing firm, and making clear the consequences of an armed invasion of Greenland, policies and threats can suddenly change.

The Trump NSS puts America under this administration on a collision course with democratically elected European governments, as well as  the European Union, and makes it clear that it will be doing whatever it can to support what it calls “patriotic movements” across Europe and the Anglosphere (which includes Canada). “We want to work with aligned countries that want to restore their former greatness”.

What this actually means is support for an unprecedented assault from Russia, China, the United States and autocratic governments on democratic processes around the world. We already know that Houston and St Petersburg are at the centre of AI generated interference on social media around issues like climate change, migration, and the war in Ukraine. These influences will become more intense and partisan as elections unfold. As this document puts it, “The growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism”. We can expect more overt and covert support for right wing nationalism in Europe and around the world.

But we have the advantage of having a strong majority in support of democracy, mutual respect, and the need to resist aggression. This is true of opinion in both Europe and North America. Leaders need followers. As time goes on this document, and the doctrines it espouses, will have fewer, and not more followers.

We must understand that we are in a tough spot. We have been put on notice that the current United States government will be actively supporting political parties and movements in our country that align themselves with Trumpian policies. We should make it clear that any such intrusions into our domestic political affairs are unacceptable.

When President de Gaulle came to Canada and chose to weigh in on issues of our national sovereignty, the Canadian government asked him to leave. Mr Pearson had to remind him that there were too many Canadians buried in France for us to tolerate that kind of indignity.

Others need to be told the same thing. Tens of thousands of Canadians were killed and wounded in the first and second world wars, in Korea, on peacekeeping missions around the world, and most recently in Afghanistan. Our special forces have been an invaluable part of missions in Iraq, Syria, and in the Middle East. To have the President of the United States talk snidely about our troops serving “at the back” is to spread a lie.

All Canadians need to hear this loud and clear from all our political leaders. And Donald Trump needs to understand the depth of ill feeling he has created by spreading these lies about Canada, our bravery, and our independence. Our fellow Americans need to understand how we feel about this, and the nonsense about the 51st state.

Canada is an independent and sovereign country. We have chosen to support global and regional institutions because we know that is only by pursuing mutual interest and the shared goals for the planet that we can actually advance our own interests.

We don’t believe the pursuit of “dominance” is in our interest.  It is important that we remember that we come to terms with a history in which this was not always the case.  But thanks to the courage and determination of indigenous people, the decisions of our courts, and political changes, we have learned that partnership and respectful engagement are ultimately more productive. We must join other countries on this path, and resist attempts to allow coercion to prevail.

This is the path that Prime Minister Carney has set out in his speech at Davos. Building our resilience at home and strengthening the domestic market. Seeking new markets and strengthening partnerships around the world. Emphasizing the role that many different partners play- “middle powers” as John Holmes called them eighty years ago – and recognizing that multilateralism, the rule of law, and respecting rules are not just ideas, they can, through a determined pragmatism, be kept real and made real.

The response of the Trump administration was neither positive not receptive, mocking the role of our soldiers in Afghanistan, praising those who seek to break up the Canadian federation, and making false assertions about the meaning of our trade agreements with China, all in a single week.

But this should not deter us from pursuing both public and private diplomacy, making it clear that we want to reach a fair understanding with what is now and will be for the foreseeable future our most important trading partner, and closest neighbour, the United States of America.

2026 is not 1984. War is not peace. Freedom is not slavery. Ignorance is not strength. Two plus 2 do not equal 5. And we still choose not to love Big Brother.

It will be a world of difficult choices, but our integrity and our determination make subjugation and acquiescence an unacceptable choice.

We do not want to be part of an empire.  We want a partnership, not just with the United States but with other countries as well.

The most important project we need to undertake is to do all the things we need to do to advance our progress from the Arctic to the Great Lakes, from the Atlantic to the Pacific.  We have to ensure that our sovereignty is not simply a word, but is matched by deeds, that we take the necessary and long overdue steps to embrace the needs of all Canadians for security and prosperity.

Everything we do – the pursuit of national projects, protecting our sovereignty in every corner of the country, investing far more in our own defence and the defence of our allies, building resilience and solidarity in ensuring that we listen to the voices of the most marginalized and forgotten – has to be an effort to ensure that we match words with deeds, every step of the way.

The idea of paths being pursued, with dignity and mutual respect, runs deep in our history.  The indigenous diplomacy that predates European settlement is symbolized by the two row wampum belt that speaks to peoples joined together on a parallel path, respecting sovereignty and dignity and yet going together on a common journey.  In different canoes, but on the same river and a shared journey.

That is the Canadian approach, and we have to invite others to join us on this journey, neither subordinate nor domineering.  It is a better way.  It will require both determination and imagination, but above all a plan to take the practical steps that will make this vision a reality.

From my experience at the United Nations I know for certain there are many countries that want to join us in this new era of partnership. From polar ice caps to every continent there are people and countries who are seeking to build stronger ties.  We have much to learn and much to share on this journey, respecting sovereignty yet firmly rejecting the siren call of doctrines of superiority, knowing that in the modern world none of are exceptional yet at the same time all of us are.

We can be proud of our countries yet fully aware that our common humanity and our common fate require more than a little humility, but also require effort and action.

The other day I wrote down a short “declaration”, that expresses some of these thoughts in short form. I leave them with you.

“Canadian Declaration of Resistance in Defence of Sovereignty, Democracy, and Human Rights

1. We commit to defending the territorial integrity and democracy of our country, Canada, and to face any and all economic, physical or other attack from countries or forces pursuing aggressive aims, or threats to pursue such attack, with determination and devotion to our country. This commitment includes any threats or attacks from our southern neighbour, the United States of America or any other country or non-state actor.
2. We commit to resist such attacks and to increase our capacity to defend ourselves, militarily, politically, and economically.
3. We understand that we can only succeed in defeating this aggression if we extend economic, political, and military support to those countries and jurisdictions facing similar attacks and threats.
4. We seek neither land nor wealth from this resistance. We call upon aggressors to stop attacks upon their own people, as well as on their neighbours and others.  We call upon the citizens of aggressors to join with us in solidarity to stop these egregious attacks.
5. We remain deeply committed as a country to international law, to human rights and the rule of law in Canada and around the world, to the Constitution of Canada and the Charter of the United Nations and other agreements and treaties we have signed.  It is because of this commitment that we are committed both to our own sovereignty and security, and that of every member state of the United Nations.”

The greatest orator of Confederation, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, who was assassinated just a few steps from Parliament Hill, put it much more eloquently: “We are in the rapids, and we must go on”.

Indeed we must and shall 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.