Canada’s Principal Power Moment |
Canada is a G7 principal power, shaping global order to advance its national interests and distinctive national values in an increasingly multipower world. It is not a mere middle power, dependent on combining with other middle powers under the multilateral organisations and international law of the 1940s to survive and thrive.
Carney’s Claims at Davos
Prime Minister Mark Carney made this clear in his speech to the World Economic Forum at Davos on January 20, 2026. He accurately stated that the old global order created in the 1940s was now “ruptured.” As Carney put it: “The multilateral institutions on which middle powers relied — the WTO, the UN, the COP — the architecture of collective problem solving — are greatly diminished.” To be sure, he diplomatically said, twice, that Canada was a middle power, knowing that most other leaders in his audience were from real middle powers. But he then went on to say, at greater length, that Canada was much more than that.
Carney declared, as had Prime Minister Stephen Harper before him, that Canada is an “energy superpower” in a world where energy is central and causing crises. He added: “We have the most educated population in the world. Our pension funds are amongst the world’s largest and most sophisticated investors. We have capital, talent and a government with the immense fiscal capacity to act decisively.” Carney was the first leader of a country of consequence to take down the sign from the window to say so, leading other G7 leaders to take theirs down too.
Canada’s Top-Tier Power
The hard facts of objective capability bear Carney’s claims out in an even bigger, broader way. Canada is now number........