Mark Carney's Davos Speech (2026)

Mark Carney’s Davos Speech (2026), Canada, is a special address delivered by Prime Minister Mark Carney on 20 January 2026 at the World Economic Forum 56th Annual Meetings held in the Swiss town of Davos. In the speech, he emphasized that the rules-based international order has lost its functionality, that the world is not undergoing a transition but a structural rupture, and that mid-sized states must position themselves in this new global environment based on strategic autonomy and cooperation.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivers a speech at the 56th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, 20 January 2026 – (Anadolu Ajansı)

The full text of the speech is as follows:

Larry, thank you very much. I will begin in French, then return to English.

[The following section is translated from French]

Thank you, Larry. To be here with you tonight at this critical moment for Canada and the world is both a privilege and a duty. Today, I will speak of a rupture in the world order, the end of a comforting fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality; a reality in which great power geopolitics knows no boundaries or constraints.

Yet I also wish to say that other countries, particularly mid-sized powers like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order grounded in our values: respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and the territorial integrity of states. The power of those with less power begins with honesty.

[The following section is translated from English]

Every day it seems we are reminded that we live in an era of great power competition, where the rules-based order is weakening, where the strong do what they can and the weak endure what they must. And this aphorism attributed to Thucydides is presented as an inevitable truth, the natural logic of international relations reasserting itself.

Faced with this logic, countries are strongly inclined to avoid conflict, accommodate, avoid trouble and hope that compliance will buy them security. But it will not. So what are our options?

In 1978, Czech dissident Václav Havel, who would later become president, wrote an essay titled The Power of the Powerless, in which he posed a simple question: How did the communist system sustain itself? And he began his answer with a greengrocer.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivers a speech at the 56th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, 20 January 2026 – (Anadolu Ajansı)

Every morning this shopkeeper hung a sign in his window: “Workers of the World, Unite!” He did not believe it, no one believed it, yet he still hung it — to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to keep going. And because every shopkeeper on every street did the same, the system persisted, not only through coercion but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they knew to be false.

Havel called this “living within a lie.” The system’s power does not come from its truth but from everyone’s willingness to pretend it is true; its fragility stems from the same source. The moment even one person stops playing the game, removes the greengrocer’s sign, the illusion begins to crack. My friends, the time has come for corporations and countries to take down their signs.

For decades, countries like Canada prospered under the structure we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, praised its principles, and benefited from its predictability. And in doing so, we pursued values-based foreign policies under its protection.

We knew the narrative of the rules-based order was partially false; we knew that the most powerful would exempt themselves when it suited them, that trade rules were applied asymmetrically. We also knew that international law was applied with varying degrees of rigor depending on whether one was the defendant or the victim.

This fiction was functional, and particularly under American hegemony, it contributed to the provision of public goods, the protection of open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and frameworks for resolving disputes. So we hung the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals and largely avoided confronting the gap between rhetoric and reality. But this accommodation no longer works. Let me be clear: We are not in a transition but in a rupture.

Over the past twenty years, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have clearly exposed the risks of excessive global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as a weapon, tariffs as instruments of pressure, financial infrastructure as a lever of coercion, and supply chains as exploitable vulnerabilities.

When integration becomes the source of your nationality, you can no longer continue living within the lie of mutual benefit through integration. The multilateral institutions on which mid-sized states rely — the World Trade Organization, the United Nations, COP — the architecture of collective problem-solving, is itself under threat. The result is that many countries are reaching the same conclusion: they must develop greater strategic autonomy in energy, food, critical minerals, finance and supply chains. And this impulse is understandable. A country that cannot feed itself, cannot secure its energy, or cannot defend itself has limited options. When rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.

But let us be clear about where this leads. A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable. And another truth is this: if great powers abandon rules and values — even their appearance — in pursuit of unlimited power and interest, the gains provided by functionalism will become increasingly difficult to reproduce.

Hegemons cannot monetize their relationships indefinitely. Allies will diversify to protect themselves against uncertainty. They will buy insurance, expand their options, and seek to rebuild sovereignty — where once sovereignty rested on rules, it will increasingly rest on capacity to resist pressure.

Everyone in this room knows this is classic risk management. Risk management has a cost; but the cost of strategic autonomy and sovereignty can be shared.

Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than every country building its own fortress. Common standards reduce fragmentation. Complementarities create positive sum outcomes. And for mid-sized states like Canada, the question is not whether we will adapt to the new reality — we must. The question is whether we will achieve this adaptation merely by building higher walls, or whether we can do something more ambitious.

Canada has been among the first countries to hear this call to awakening, and it has fundamentally changed our strategic posture. Canadians now understand that the old, comfortable assumption — that our geography and alliance memberships would automatically guarantee us prosperity and security — no longer holds. And our new approach is grounded in what Finnish President Alexander Stubb calls “values-based realism.”

In other words, we aim to be both principled and pragmatic — principled in our commitment to core values, sovereignty, territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force except as permitted under the UN Charter, and respect for human rights; pragmatic in acknowledging that progress is often incremental, that interests diverge, and that no partner shares all our values.

Therefore, we engage with the world broadly and strategically, with open eyes. Rather than waiting for the world we wish for, we actively engage with the world as it is. We calibrate our relationships to reflect the depth of our values, and given the current fluidity of the world, the risks it creates and what is at stake, we prioritize inclusive engagement to maximize our impact. And we now rely not only on the power of our values but on the value of our power. We are building this power at home.

Since my government took office, we have lowered taxes on income, capital gains and business investment. We have removed all federal barriers to interprovincial trade. We are accelerating a trillion-dollar investment in energy, artificial intelligence, critical minerals, new trade corridors and beyond. By the end of this decade, we will double our defense spending, and we are doing so in ways that strengthen our domestic industries.

And abroad, we are rapidly diversifying. We have agreed on a comprehensive strategic partnership with the European Union, including participation in SAFE, the European defense supply arrangement. In six months, we have signed 12 additional trade and security agreements across four continents. In recent days, we have concluded new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar. We are negotiating free trade agreements with India, ASEAN, Thailand, the Philippines and Mercosur.

We are also doing something else. We are embracing variable geometry — forming coalitions on different issues based on shared values and interests — to help solve global problems. Therefore, we are a core member of the Volunteers Coalition on Ukraine and one of the countries providing the largest per capita contributions to its defense and security.

We stand firmly alongside Greenland and Denmark on Arctic sovereignty and fully support Greenland’s unique right to determine its own future.

Our commitment to NATO’s Article 5 is unshakable; therefore, we are working with our NATO allies to further secure the Alliance’s northern and western flanks, including through the North-Baltic Gateway. We are doing this through unprecedented Canadian investments in overseas radar systems, submarines, aircraft and ground assets — land-based and ice-capable vessels.

Canada is strongly opposing tariffs on Greenland and calling for focused talks to achieve our shared goals of security and prosperity in the Arctic.

In multilateral trade, we are advocating efforts to build a bridge between the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the European Union — creating a new trading bloc encompassing 1.5 billion people. On critical minerals, we are creating G7-based buyer clubs to enable the world to move away from concentrated supply chains. In artificial intelligence, we are cooperating with like-minded democracies to avoid being forced to choose between hegemonies and hyper-scalers.

This is not naive multilateralism; it is not reliance on their institutions. This is building effective coalitions with partners who share sufficient common ground to act together on specific issues.

In some cases, this will mean the majority of nations. This approach creates a dense network of connections in trade, investment and culture that we can draw upon in the face of future challenges and opportunities.

I argue that mid-sized states must act together; because if we are not at the table, we are on the menu.

But I must also say that great powers, at least for now, are capable of acting alone. They possess the market size, military capacity and leverage to dictate terms. Mid-sized states do not.

And when we negotiate only in bilateral talks with a single hegemon, we negotiate from a position of weakness. We accept what is offered. We compete with each other to be the most compliant. This is not sovereignty. This is performing sovereignty while accepting subordination. In a world of great power competition, mid-sized states have a choice: either compete with each other for the hegemon’s favor, or unite to create a third path with real influence.

We must not allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the enduring strength of legitimacy, honesty and the power of rules — if we choose to use them together. This brings me back to Havel.

What does it mean for mid-sized states to live in truth? First, it means naming the truth. Stop pretending the rules-based international order still functions as it was promised. Call it what it is: a system of intensifying great power competition where the most powerful pursue their interests and use economic integration as a tool of coercion.

This means acting consistently, applying the same standards to allies and rivals alike. When mid-sized states remain silent while criticizing economic coercion from one direction while benefiting from it in another, they keep their signs in the window.

This means building what we claim to believe in, rather than waiting for the old order to be restored. It means creating institutions and agreements that actually function. And it means reducing the leverage that coercion relies on — which means building a strong domestic economy. This must be the urgent priority of every government.

Diversification internationally is not merely economic prudence; it is a material foundation for an honest foreign policy. Because countries earn the right to take principled stances by reducing their vulnerabilities to coercion.

Canada. Canada has what the world wants. We are an energy superpower. We have vast reserves of critical minerals. We have the world’s most educated population. Our pension funds are among the largest and most sophisticated investors globally. In other words, we have capital and capability… and we have a government with immense fiscal capacity to act decisively. And we have values that many admire.

Canada is a functioning pluralistic society. Our public sphere is noisy, diverse and free. Canadians remain committed to sustainability. We are a stable and reliable partner in an unstable world. We are a partner that builds long-term relationships and values them.

And we have something else. We have the capacity to understand what is happening and the resolve to act accordingly. We know this rupture demands more than accommodation. It demands an honest acceptance of the world as it is.

We are taking down the sign in the window. We know the old order will not return. We must not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy; but we believe that from this rupture we can build something greater, better, stronger and fairer. This is the duty of mid-sized states — the countries that stand to lose the most in a world of fortresses and gain the most from genuine cooperation.

The powerful have power. But we have something too — the capacity to stop pretending, to name the truth, to build our power at home and to act together.

This is Canada’s path. We are choosing this path openly and confidently, and it remains fully open to every country willing to walk with us. Thank you very much.