Canada's Indo-Pacific Strategy is now more robust than ever
But will Mark Carney deliver?
A guest post by Vina Nadjibulla, Vice-President of Research & Strategy at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. Originally published in Policy Magazine.
The first year of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s leadership has had a transformational impact on both Canada’s foreign policy and its standing in the world. The shift has been especially evident in the Indo-Pacific, where Ottawa is more active, more strategic, and more ambitious than it has ever been.
But to understand what is driving this change, it is necessary to start not in Asia, but with Carney’s reading of the United States.
The central premise of his foreign policy is that Canada is not simply managing another difficult period in the bilateral relationship with Washington. In Carney’s view, most notably stated in Davos on January 20, Canada is confronting a deeper rupture caused by changes in the United States itself.
Under Donald Trump, the U.S. has become more illiberal at home and more predatory abroad. Canada’s deep integration with the U.S. was a source of strength when Washington was the principal anchor of a liberal, rules-based order. That integration looks much more like a strategic vulnerability when the U.S. begins to behave like a predatory hegemon.
From this starting point, Carney has reframed Canadian foreign policy around two overriding objectives: economic survival and sovereignty.
The result is a foreign policy that is more pragmatic, more economically focused, and more explicitly tied to questions of national resilience. Carney has little interest in “megaphone diplomacy” and rarely foregrounds democracy promotion, human rights, or values-based framing in his external engagement. That is a notable departure from his predecessor.
Carney’s approach is not values-free, but it is unmistakably interest-led. It is also ambitious. Carney’s targets to double Canada’s non-U.S. trade and attract $1 trillion in new investment over the next decade are demanding — but also revealing. They underscore how he sees foreign policy: not as a separate diplomatic sphere, but as an instrument of economic resilience and national renewal.
Major projects, critical minerals, defence industrial policy, energy strategy, artificial intelligence, and quantum are no longer adjacent to foreign policy; they are increasingly part of it.
Carney has focused on three related objectives: resetting relations with India, recalibrating relations with China, and deepening strategic partnerships
with Japan, Australia, South Korea, and key Southeast Asian states.
The Indo-Pacific Moves to the Centre
In the first months of Carney’s tenure, some wondered whether the Indo-Pacific would receive the same level of attention, especially because Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy had been launched by the previous government and still carried some of that political association.
Those doubts have now been put to rest. Over the past nine months, the Indo-Pacific has become central to Carney’s broader effort to diversify Canada’s partnerships and reduce over-reliance on the U.S. The Prime Minister has travelled repeatedly to the region, with consequential visits to China, India, Japan, Australia, Singapore, and South Korea.
He has also used Canada’s own diplomatic platforms to bring the region closer. He invited leaders from India, Australia, and South Korea as special guests to the 2025 G7 Leaders’ Summit in Kananaskis. He hosted Indonesia’s president in Ottawa and signed the Canada-Indonesia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, alongside new defence cooperation memoranda.
Through these efforts, Carney has focused on three related objectives: resetting relations with India, recalibrating relations with China, and deepening strategic partnerships with Japan, Australia, South Korea, and key Southeast Asian states.
The clearest achievement has been India. Carney moved quickly to reset one of Canada’s most damaged bilateral relationships. His March 2026 visit to India pushed that effort further, producing new agreements and a commitment to finalize a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement by the end of the year. This reset makes strategic sense. India offers scale, growth, geopolitical weight, and major opportunities in energy, agriculture, digital infrastructure, education, and emerging technologies.
Carney has also elevated ties with Japan and Australia in ways that are strategically sound. These are trusted Indo-Pacific partners with whom Canada can deepen both economic and security cooperation. His March tour produced a new Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with Japan and reinforced the trend toward closer defence, critical minerals, energy, cyber, and technology cooperation with both Tokyo and Canberra.
Canada needs anchor partners in the Indo-Pacific where interests, trust, and political alignment are relatively strong. Japan and Australia fit that description.
More broadly, Carney has benefited from — and built on — a stronger Canadian presence in the region. Canada is now more visible, more plugged into regional networks, and more active across the Indo-Pacific than it has ever been.
The groundwork laid by Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy — expanded diplomatic staffing, new trade and financing offices, Team Canada trade missions, the ASEAN strategic partnership, and sustained naval deployments — has given Carney’s government a stronger platform from which to operate.
Carney’s contribution has been to invest political capital in the region and give these efforts a more coherent strategic rationale tied to resilience, diversification, and harder-edged partnership building. The result is that Canada now looks more serious in the Indo-Pacific than ever before.
Canada’s engagement in the region has also benefited from an enhanced international profile. Carney’s Davos speech, and the ideas underpinning it, have resonated deeply from Delhi to Jakarta. Across the region, Canada is increasingly seen as a constructive and pragmatic partner — one that is willing to engage across geopolitical divides while remaining anchored in its own interests.
Initiatives such as linking the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) with the Canada–EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) reflect an effort to think beyond traditional regional silos and shape emerging economic architectures.
From Momentum to Delivery
Carney’s first year has produced real momentum. But momentum in foreign policy is fleeting. The real test now is implementation.
The first challenge is execution. Agreements signed during high-level visits must translate into concrete outcomes: market access, investment flows, joint projects, and sustained institutional cooperation. Canada has historically struggled with follow-through in the Indo-Pacific.
The second challenge is China. Carney’s recalibration of relations with Beijing has strategic logic. In an era of overdependence on the United States, Canada needs room to stabilize its relationship with China, especially in selective areas such as agriculture, energy, climate, and other economic sectors where engagement can serve Canadian interests.
But the test of this policy is whether the guardrails Carney has promised are actually put in place, understood across government, and enforced. Canada will need to show that it can deepen engagement while still upholding Canadian law, protecting against foreign interference, guarding against forced labour, screening investment in sensitive sectors, and defending its economic and national security interests.
Selective engagement with China with clear guardrails is conceptually sound. Operationally, it is complex. It requires clear definitions of what is in and out of scope, robust enforcement of investment and security frameworks, and sustained coordination across departments.
India presents the third challenge. The diplomatic reset has created political space, but the relationship remains fragile. Public opinion in Canada is still shaped by concerns related to foreign interference, diaspora tensions, and the Khalistan issue. Canadians may support re-engagement in principle, but many still lack a clear understanding of its strategic rationale.
That gap matters. A successful India strategy cannot rest only on leader-level diplomacy. It requires a deeper investment in knowledge, networks, and institutional capacity across government, business, academia, and civil society. Canada needs more India competence if it is to turn the current opening into a durable partnership.
The fourth challenge is sustaining momentum with key partners.
Relations with Japan and Australia have finally reached a level of strategic alignment that reflects their importance. But these partnerships require sustained attention, resources, and institutional follow-through.
That should include a more serious Indo-Pacific dimension in Canada’s Defence Industrial Strategy. It makes little sense for Canada to talk about stronger defence partnerships in the Indo-Pacific while concentrating industrial cooperation almost exclusively on NATO partners. If Ottawa is serious about strategic diversification, its defence industrial vision must reflect that.
Finally, Ottawa must address an important economic blind spot. Much of Canada’s Indo-Pacific engagement has focused on expanding markets for energy, agriculture, and other goods. These are essential. But they are only part of the story.
The fastest-growing segments of trade in the region are in services, digital infrastructure, and talent mobility. Education, in particular, is a strategic asset. It underpins people-to-people ties, supports innovation ecosystems, and feeds long-term economic relationships. Yet recent policy changes and the lack of alignment between immigration, education, and trade objectives risk undermining this advantage.
A more integrated approach — linking talent strategy to trade, innovation, and regional engagement — will be essential if Canada is to compete effectively in the Indo-Pacific.
The test is whether the guardrails Carney has promised are actually
put in place, understood across government, and enforced.
The Challenge Ahead
Delivering on Carney’s ambitious, integrated agenda will require not just new policies, but a step change in Canada’s statecraft capacity in the Indo-Pacific. It will require new ways of working across governments and with the private sector, clearer priorities, stronger coordination, and a greater willingness to measure results not by meetings held or agreements announced, but by outcomes delivered.
Canada enters Carney’s second year in office with a stronger position in the Indo-Pacific than it has ever had. The foundations are in place: increased political attention, expanded partnerships, and a clearer strategic rationale.
But those foundations will only matter if Canada can build the institutional muscle to sustain engagement, follow through on commitments, and turn diplomatic openings into strategic results.
 | A guest post by
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Why is it claimed the U.S. is more "illiberal" under Trump, but we don't say the same of Canada which, I argue, has become more illiberal since 2015?
Michael, thanks for publishing Vina's piece. Her call for "follow-through" in Carney's Indo-Pacific pivot is right. But speaking as a journalist who covers this region, I keep running into a structural problem -- Canadian aid and trade financing operate in an intentional fog.
Let me give you two concrete examples, both from Cambodia.
1) A flight simulator deal with no Canadian announcement
https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/air-transport/2023-02-28/cambodia-steps-training-cae-full-flight-simulator
In 2023, I wrote an article for AIN about Export Development Canada acting as guarantor on a CAE full-flight simulator for Lanmei Training Center in Phnom Penh, linked to a Chinese-backed airline. ABA Bank—a subsidiary of the National Bank of Canada—facilitated the deal. I reported this first. The Canadian government never issued a press release. No announcement from EDC, Global Affairs, or the embassy. Moreover, after some investigation, there appeared to have been a lack of communication between the embassy and EDC on this deal—curious, but admittedly not surprising.
2) $30 million for ADRA Canada, whose chair writes about spiritual warfare
Canada recently committed over $30 million to ADRA Canada for health systems work in Cambodia, Kenya, and the Philippines. ADRA is the "humanitarian arm" of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The Seventh-day Adventist Church's General Conference ended 2024 with US$338 million in net assets, 94% of which sits in cash and investments. This is not a poor church needing Canadian welfare. Yet millions have, and continue to flow to its humanitarian arm from Canadian taxpayers.
https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2025/02/canada-announces-projects-to-strengthen-health-systems-in-africa-asia-and-the-americas.html
The chair of ADRA Canada's board is Paul Llewellyn—who also serves as president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Canada. In a 2023 church publication (Canadian Adventist Messenger), Llewellyn wrote: "Satan is making his last-ditch effort for your children."
http://issues.adventistmessenger.ca/books/biam/?fbclid=IwAR1E-YcgUORvVLvsXbnOEs3MePIe8mRQ3SfERjpyeWw5oAsa-Hm2VCTVoHg#p=3
Now consider the context. Cambodia is a deeply Buddhist nation—over 90% of its population practices Theravada Buddhism. Canadian tax dollars are flowing through a Christian organization whose chair uses apocalyptic spiritual warfare rhetoric, in a country where that theology is culturally foreign.
Now consider the broader context. Christian nationalism is surging across North America.
But the contradiction runs deeper.
Canada's official foreign policy states that "the promotion and protection of the human rights of 2SLGBTQI+ people is a foreign policy priority for Canada." The Seventh-day Adventist Church's official position states that sexual intimacy belongs only within a heterosexual marriage and that sexual acts outside that circle are forbidden. The church also has a documented history with conversion therapy.
https://adventist.news/news/statement-of-the-general-conference-regarding-locally-sponsored-activities-promoting-or-supporting-non-biblical-human-sexuality
The broken ATIP system
If you want to verify Canada's involvement overseas, you often have to file an Access to Information (ATIP) request. But the system is broken. The Federal Information Commissioner reported nearly one-third of requests exceed the 30-day legal deadline, with some delayed by years or decades—and there are no penalties for missed deadlines. Investigative journalist Anna Mehler Paperny has over 60 ATIP requests pending, most overdue, some by more than six months. When documents finally arrive, they are often so heavily redacted they are unsearchable and next to useless.
Global Affairs Canada itself, when asked about a 2024 ATIP request, cited "high volumes and staffing shortages" and offered no clarity on timelines.
The reality of covering the region
A further structural barrier is often overlooked -- the Indo-Pacific is not a homogeneous region.
Press freedom varies significantly by country, and the consequences of a misstep can range from deportation to personal risk. Journalists based here operate with caution as a matter of professional necessity—we live and work in these countries. We operate in constant ambiguity.
Against that backdrop, Canadian engagement at regional trade shows is notably muted. Other national pavilions issue daily summaries, hold briefings, and respond to inquiries. The Canadian contingent, by contrast, offers little direct engagement. Basic diplomatic outreach -- answering questions, sharing information -- has atrophied.
And finally, as someone who tracks Canada-China development, I rely almost entirely on the Chinese side for information, including detailed accounts of Canada-China diplomacy that cannot be found in any single Canadian government equivalent. The Canadian side is not returning calls.
I would argue that you cannot build serious "follow-through" from behind a wall of silence.
PM Carney wants an "interest-led" foreign policy. Fine. But interest-led cannot also mean "trust us, don't look." If Canada wants to be a serious partner in the Indo-Pacific, basic transparency is needed.
(And they can't be trapped by honey pots — but that's another conversation.)