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Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney speaking at the Lowy Institute (Sahlan Hayes/Lowy Institute)

Mark Carney’s Pacific pivot

Canada’s Liberal PM is reorienting Ottawa’s world view – and eating the Conservative Party’s lunch while doing it.

Grant Wyeth

5 March 20264 min read

Canada’s national motto is A Mari usque ad Mare (from sea to sea). Recently, in reciting the motto, politicians have added a third sea, the Arctic. Yet, for most of Canada’s existence as a modern state, the Atlantic – with its central actors of Washington, London and Paris – has dominated Ottawa’s foreign policy thinking. Now the prevailing winds have seen Prime Minister Mark Carney plot a course towards the Pacific.

When Carney arrived in Australia this week he did so on a flight from India, where he sought a complete reset of the relationship. He next goes to Japan, having earlier this year made a much-heralded trip to China.

During his Lowy Institute address on Wednesday, Carney stated his Australian visit aimed to forge a “critical mineral alliance” as a sovereign asset – a priority he will carry onwards in the region. Carney argued that “true sovereignty” required diversification and partnerships that limited dependence on hegemons to “ensure that integration is never the source of our subordination.”

During Carney’s trip to China in January, the headline item was Canada cutting tariffs on Chinese EVs it had placed in concert with the United States – marking a symbolic break with Washington. However, the more impactful agreement was China agreeing to drop punitive tariffs on Canadian canola. China is the world’s largest importer of canola, while Canada is the largest producer, with 99% being grown in the Conservative Party heartland of rural Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

If India represents the western horizon of Carney’s strategy, Australia is its missing middle.

The India visit was also a reset. Ahead of his trip, the Canadian government released a statement saying it no longer believes India is engaged in foreign interference on Canadian soil. For decades, tensions over Sikh separatism – and Canadian allegations of state-sponsored killing – poisoned relations. India may still monitor separatists in Canada, but Ottawa now seems prepared to tolerate this in pursuit of a broader rapprochement with New Delhi. Canada hopes to sign a free trade agreement with India by the end of the year, and to double trade by 2030. Central to this cooperation is a new uranium supply agreement, part of a broader energy partnership that will also include LNG, solar and hydrogen. Canada’s uranium mines lie exclusively within Saskatchewan, while British Columbia and Alberta have over 90% of Canada’s natural gas reserves and Alberta dominates hydrogen production.

During his Australia visit, Carney has also highlighted cooperation on Australia’s JORN radar system which is being adapted to Arctic conditions, and the potential for greater technological collaboration with the recent release of Canada’s Defence Industry Strategy. It is in Australia’s interests to draw Canada further into the Pacific.

Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN) transmitter site at sunset, Harts Range, Alice Springs (Sonja Canty/Defence Imagery)

The emergence of Donald Trump and his revolutionary assault on Western institutionalism has created an existential crisis for Canada. Even without Trump’s direct threats on Canada’s sovereignty, his disruption of the Canada Clause cuts to the core of how the country – and especially the Liberal Party – views the world. Choppy waters require a change in direction.

Canada’s population distribution drove its traditional thinking and Atlantic emphasis, with more than 60% of the country living in Ontario and Quebec. Most of the country’s political, financial, military, and cultural institutions sit along Lake Ontario and the St Lawrence River and its tributaries, with the country’s ideas simply following the flow of water out towards the sea.

The Liberal Party’s dominance of Canadian politics – having governed for 85 of the past 125 years – has been due to its command of this watershed. For those who play near water, rules, norms and institutions are essential, and Canada is a keen multilateralist. In shaping NATO, it acted as a bridge between US expectations and European sovereignty concerns. The Treaty’s Article 2 – promoting liberal institutions, economic alignment and cooperative stability – is still colloquially known as the “Canada Clause.”

Yet Canada is a vast land with interests and worldviews distinct from its “Laurentian elites”. A political revolt in the 1990s by the country’s western provinces led to the eventual creation of the Conservative Party of Canada in 2003. Masquerading as a national party, its political project is to shift the country’s centre of gravity westward. To achieve this, it needs to turn populous Ontario from an Atlantic-facing province into a Pacific-facing one.

Carney is now eating the Conservative Party’s lunch.

If India represents the western horizon of Carney’s strategy, Australia is its missing middle. The glaring reality highlighted by Carney’s visit to Australia is that two such natural allies barely do much together. Their large resource sectors often make them economic competitors, while security cooperation tends to occur within broader coalitions and multilateral exercises rather than through a formal bilateral defence treaty.

The emerging middle power “values-based realism” offers an opportunity to rectify this and build closer bonds without any hand-holding from Washington.

Given the Liberal Party’s Machiavellian nature, this westward shift is as much domestic politics as it is foreign policy. Since November, three Conservative MPs have crossed the floor to join the Liberals, each citing national unity as their motivation. If the economic benefits from Carney’s Pacific pivot become visible in western Canada – and his commanding polling lead holds – more MPs may follow.

Rather than be defensive in response to the “rupture” in global conditions Carney described in Davos, the Liberal Party has instead seen political opportunity – continuing its adept ability to trim its sails to the shifting winds and make Canada’s interests and its own one and the same.

About the author

Grant Wyeth

Grant Wyeth is a writer and foreign affairs analyst. He is currently a Research Fellow at the Australian India Institute and columnist for The Diplomat.

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Canada