Bob Rae is a Canadian politician and diplomat. He was Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations from 2020 to 2025. Before that, Rae was premier of Ontario from 1990 to 1995 and interim leader of Canada’s Liberal Party from 2011 to 2013.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at Davos drew much attention. Broadly, he said powerful countries are ignoring rules, bullying smaller states and using trade as a weapon, stating: ‘We’re living in the midst of a rupture in the world order, not merely a transition.’ What difference will that speech make?
It was candid and substantive but not a negative speech. It’s about how we all have to figure out how to deal with changes of this magnitude, and the kind of policy changes required inside countries, as well as between countries in the multilateral context. The speech was directed obviously at global leaders, particularly Asian, European and African leaders, but also very much at Canada itself. I don’t think it was directed much at the United States, because it’s not an attempt to tell the Americans they’re wrong and should change. It’s more realistic than that. It’s a recognition that this is a path the US president has taken that has done a lot of harm already and will continue to do harm to global institutions and bilateral relationships. But that there are things we can practically do about it.
With your experience as an ambassador at the UN, how do you think the speech went down with those countries for whom the ‘rupture’ in the world order has been evident for decades?
I had a series of meetings in New York after the speech. There were those who said, it took you a long time to figure that out. But by and large, the reaction was positive, even from countries in Africa and Asia, from diplomats I’ve worked with for years. One of the reasons it had real impact was that the speech came from a Canadian. In certain places, the assumption had been that Canada was wrapped up in the US, so don’t expect them to say much. But that view has always been wrong. On the Iraq war we took a different position to the US by not sending troops; on the Gaza conflict, too, as it unfolded.
Bob Rae speaking at the UN General Assembly in 2022 during his time as Canadian ambassador to the United Nations. Photo: Timothy A Clary AFP via Getty Images.
The sense I got from those diplomats was that the speech allowed them to say things they might otherwise have not said. On trade in particular, the prime minister’s critique has long been that the behaviour of the Trump administration is directed at the entire system. Countries who try to get a deal under the radar are likely to get less than they think they’re going to. There need to be more coordinated efforts to rebuild trust and confidence in the global trading system. That’s why the prime minister has been engaging with Asia–Pacific countries and Europeans.
How is the issue of the US bid to acquire Greenland seen in Canada?
For Canadians, the Arctic is existential. Greenland was pulled off the table after the meeting between Mark Rutte, the NATO secretary-general, and President Trump at Davos in January – nobody knows what was agreed. The Greenland situation will have to be the subject of negotiations between several countries. If those negotiations are taking place, nobody knows where or how or what they are.
We also need to understand the connection between Canada’s indigenous population – which is the majority of people in Nunavut, our Arctic territory that neighbours Greenland – and the Inuit majority in Greenland itself. Inuit leaders have made it very clear that they expect Inuit sovereignty across all of the Arctic to be respected. Canada has a completely different perspective than the United States on this.
How do you think Canada might act on the principles of Carney’s Davos speech at the NATO summit in July?
When the Second World War ended, Canada was the fourth largest military power in the world. But subsequently defence was not prioritized the way it was by the French and the British, for instance. Canada has now made a major shift in its defence thinking – about procurement, equipment and increasing troop numbers. The issue of Ukraine is uppermost in Canadians’ minds. Canada has always been a strong supporter financially of Ukraine, and has done a lot of work on training, with the UK. The next NATO meeting will be a very tough conversation about Ukraine, because the notion that all the pressure should be put on Ukraine alone in order to reach an agreement – which seems to be President Trump’s most recent position – is, from a Canadian point of view, simply not on.
Europe has to step up. There will be a critical discussion about what more can be done to ensure any outcome of the war guarantees Ukrainians’ security and future prosperity. The challenge is that President Putin has never accepted the sovereignty of Ukraine. It’s going to be very hard to reach a negotiated settlement.
Canada, like other NATO countries, has pledged to increase its defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP by 2035. How understanding are Canadians of the trade-offs necessary to reach that?
People only worry about trade-offs when they actually happen, and they’re not yet totally apparent to everyone in Canada. But I think the direction of policy is clear. And I don’t think there’s any doubt among Canadians that, from the perspectives of both defence and industrial strategy, this shift is key.
Because if our manufacturing can’t be assured of a sensible long-term relationship with the US – such as the one we’ve had since the 1960s, reinforced by the free trade agreement of the 1980s – we’re going to have to look very differently at how to retain our scientific and manufacturing capacity. That’s what has driven the government’s decision to announce its first ever Defence Industrial Strategy. And that will require greater government contribution and private investment. As the markets for all kinds of manufacturing change, we have to be ahead of the game in terms of the investments we need to make.
The difference between Canada and Europe in dealing with the United States is down to geography. The US is our neighbour with a population nine times the size of ours. Companies have built up trading patterns between Canada and the US over decades. For us, this is existential. If there ever were illusions about our relationship with the US, President Trump has dispelled them. The change of heart in Canada is profound. The US is polling closer to Russia than to any European country or Japan. The public opinion polling I’ve seen shows much greater support for the government than ever – and for the policy direction the prime minister is taking.