Pierre Poilievre plants the seeds of an alternative to the Carney doctrine

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We find ourselves suddenly returned to the great days of the set-piece speech. At a time when attention spans are said to be shorter than ever, when the media is consumed with clickbait and politics is all about getting likes on TikTok, in recent weeks the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition have each chosen to deliver lengthy, learned, intricately argued speeches on, of all things, foreign policy.

What is more, each has been rewarded for it, politically: The speeches not only attracted headlines, but favourable notice, in turn sparking a great deal of further debate and comment. Why, it’s almost as if we still had a healthy, literate democratic culture. Bliss is it in this nerdy dawn to be alive!

Mark Carney was first, with his celebrated speech to the World Economic Forum at Davos. The speech’s themes are by now well known. The great powers, notably the United States, no longer even pay lip service to the “rules-based international order,” on everything from freedom of trade to the inviolability of international borders.

In this predatory new world, middle powers like Canada must avoid being too dependent on one great power or another, since this will inevitably be used against us. Neither should we allow the great powers to play us off against each other: If every middle power seeks to curry favour at the expense of the others, all will lose.

Rather, we should band together, forming new trade and defensive alliances that do not leave us so vulnerable to exploitation by one great power or another, allowing us to bargain with the great powers from a position of strength. Among other benefits, this would free us to pursue the kind of principled foreign policy that is difficult for vassal states.

The speech was especially noteworthy given who was giving it and when: the Prime Minister of Canada, on the brink of negotiating the renewal of a free-trade treaty with the United States, with whom the country does two-thirds of its trade. No major democracy is quite so dependent on one country, not only for trade, but for its defence.

Mr. Carney’s speech, accordingly, came off as something of a declaration of independence. The deeper integration with the United States that prime ministers have sought for decades, he was saying, was no longer quite the prize it once was. It was, rather, a trap – certainly as long as Donald Trump remained President, and maybe after.

Poilievre pitches Canada as reliable energy supplier to Germany

The speech caused such a stir that Pierre Poilievre was more or less obliged to respond with one of his own. The Conservative Leader suffers from a considerable stature gap with the Prime Minister, a sense of unseriousness fed by his periodic attacks on democratic norms and populist meme-sharing.

Worse, he has seemed loath to confront Mr. Trump, at a time when many Canadians consider him the primary threat to the country’s well-being, if not its existence as a sovereign and united nation. The suspicion is that he is, if not himself sympathetic to Mr. Trump, beholden to that section of his party that is.

And while Mr. Poilievre’s personal polling deficit versus Mr. Carney had not been mirrored previously in the relative standing of the parties, since Davos that has changed. The Liberals now lead the Conservatives by an average of about 10 points. With three Conservative MPs having crossed the floor and more rumoured to follow, the pressure was on Mr. Poilievre to do something to stop the bleeding.

Opinion: Poilievre makes the pivot on Trump, but repudiates Carney’s foreign policy

So the speech came with a great deal of anticipation. Would Mr. Poilievre strike a new, more statesmanlike tone? Would he part more explicitly with Mr. Trump than he has in the past? Would his speech bear comparison to the Prime Minister’s, in intellect and gravitas?

This was not the first such attempt, after all, to turn things around. There was the Flag Day speech a year ago. There was the speech to the Conservative convention in January. Neither had really had much impact. Would the third time be the charm?

In the event, Mr. Poilievre’s speech checked off most of this journalistically assigned to-do list. It was indeed more thoughtful, less stridently partisan than in the past – even if it did come after several days of shameless demagoguery over the “deluxe” health care benefits supposedly paid out to asylum claimants.

Mr. Poilievre made a point of mentioning Mr. Trump by name, and politely stating his differences with the President (“What President Trump says about Canada is wrong”), for example on the question of our 51st statehood. Canadians, he allowed, are “justifiably upset” at Mr. Trump’s treatment of the country – a slap at the blame-Canada camp in his own party. There was even a nod to the highbrow: Where Mr. Carney had quoted Václav Havel, Mr. Poilievre quoted Marcus Aurelius.

But what was more notable about the speech was the Conservative Leader’s attempt to lay out an alternative vision to the one presented by Mr. Carney – a strategy for dealing with the predator next door that did not amount either to copying Mr. Carney or appeasing Mr. Trump.

Canada should not declare ‘permanent rupture’ with U.S., Poilievre says

Some of the differentiation was more rhetorical than real. The Prime Minister may have left himself open with some of his own rhetoric (“strategic partnership,” “new world order”) in the course of signing that very modest trade agreement with China earlier this year, but no one actually thinks, as Mr. Poilievre implied they do, that China is a “substitute” for the United States, in trade or any other matter. China accounts for 4 per cent of our exports today. It might count for 5 per cent a decade hence.

Similarly, for all the efforts of some Conservative commentators to elevate Mr. Poilievre’s modest Aurelian crisis-management advice – keep calm, and focus on what we can control – into a full-blown foreign-policy doctrine (“national stoicism”), I have not seen anyone advocating that we should panic.

But there is nevertheless in Mr. Poilievre’s advocacy of greater national resilience (the slogan: Stronger At Home) the seeds of an alternative to Mr. Carney’s plan. It is more a matter of emphasis than anything else – there is a great deal of overlap between the two – but in broad-brush terms, where Mr. Carney stresses solidarity among nations in response to America’s coercive diplomacy, Mr. Poilievre favours a more singularly Canadian approach.

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Thus, while Mr. Carney argues for diversifying our trade, giving ourselves more options and making us less dependent on the United States, Mr. Poilievre continues to emphasize the central importance of our bilateral trading relationship. Geography, he argues, makes it inevitable. Besides, we’ve already diversified about as much as we are going to, through our extensive network of existing free-trade agreements.

Against the charges that this would leave us hostage to U.S. demands, Mr. Poilievre offers a suite of measures intended to give us greater “leverage” at the bargaining table, including: building a strategic reserve of energy and critical minerals for use in a crisis, access to which would be restricted to countries that offered us tariff-free trade; using defence procurement to similar advantage; and closing our market to Chinese cars in return for unfettered access to the U.S. market for Canadian-built cars.

More broadly, Mr. Poilievre argues for measures to bring down costs and increase economic growth – eliminate all carbon taxes, build more pipelines, cut red tape on construction, the sorts of things he has long advocated, now repackaged as an “autonomy” agenda. There are also proposals to strengthen the military, and to enhance Canada’s “digital sovereignty.”

And, of course, a proposed all-party USMCA working group of parliamentarians “to help the government get the best deal for Canada” – and to ward off charges of obstructionism or disunity, of a kind the government might use to justify a snap election.

All in all, quite statesmanlike. Of course, the short answer is: Why not do both – diversify our trade, and enhance our own resilience and leverage vis-à-vis the United States. The point in either case is to make ourselves less vulnerable to exploitation. Much of what Mr. Poilievre proposes would sit comfortably with the Liberals, just as a Conservative government would probably do a lot of what the Liberals are doing.

Still, the differences are striking. Even if it is only a question of emphasis, Mr. Poilievre has opened a legitimate debate. How much can we increase our trade with China, as a means of lessening our dependence on the United States, without becoming too dependent on it? How much would Mr. Poilievre’s proposals increase our “leverage,” and would they make any real difference at the bargaining table? How permanent is the “rupture” with the U.S.? Will everything return to normal after Mr. Trump is gone? Or has something broken in U.S. politics? Can the Democrats return to power any time soon, and if they do, how much change would that imply in the Republicans, or in their attitude toward us?

There is also, I think, a regional strategy in play. The location of Mr. Poilievre’s speech – Toronto – was no accident, as was the audience, largely drawn from the city’s business elite. If there is a part of the country that is most concerned with maintaining the existing bilateral trade relationship, less excited by proposals to diversify trade, it is Southern Ontario – particularly the business community, particularly big business, and most particularly the auto sector. Mr. Poilievre may think he has spotted an opportunity to peel them away from the Liberal Party.

Take that proposal for a new bilateral, tariff-free auto pact. Presumably this would mean reneging on the Carney government’s agreement to admit 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles annually. Which presumably means being prepared to stomach whatever retaliatory measures China took in response, almost certainly designed to punish other parts of the country – perhaps the reimposition of those stiff tariffs on Saskatchewan canola they agreed to give up as part of the auto deal.

Mr. Carney appears to have been willing to risk a few seats in Ontario to get a deal with China, calculating (correctly, as it turned out) that he could offer enough in compensatory measures – subsidies for EV purchases and so on – to placate the Premier, Doug Ford. Is Mr. Poilievre making the opposite calculation, risking some of his support in the West to make yards in Southern Ontario?