Mark Carney at Davos: Canada’s return, and the birth of a new voice for the Global South

Mark Carney’s Davos speech will be remembered as more than a policy address. It was an announcement — of Canada’s re-arrival on the global stage not as a passive beneficiary of an old order, but as an active shaper of the new one. At a moment when uncertainty, coercion, and fragmentation define international politics, Carney chose clarity over comfort. In doing so, he displayed the kind of moral courage required to energise a nation facing an existential moment in its history.

For decades, Canada’s foreign policy was rooted in stewardship of a rules-based order it did not design but helped sustain. Carney made clear that era is over. The old rituals no longer protect middle powers; the old assumptions no longer hold. Rather than mourning this rupture, Carney embraced it — arguing that countries like Canada must adapt, organise, and lead if they are not to be marginalised. This was not defensive rhetoric. It was assertive, even combative, and deliberately so.

There were moments in Davos that recalled Jawaharlal Nehru’s presence at the 1961 Belgrade conference of the Non-Aligned Movement. Like Nehru then, Carney spoke not as a supplicant to great powers but as a representative of a broader constituency — states that refuse to be reduced to proxies, markets, or battlegrounds. His message was unmistakable: sovereignty today is not secured by standing alone, but by standing together.

In this sense, the speech was epoch-making. Carney positioned Canada not merely as a Western power, but as a convenor of middle powers — many of which reside in what is still described as the Global South. This was unprecedented. Never before has a leader of a G7 country so clearly articulated the interests, anxieties, and agency of nations caught between competing hegemons. By doing so, Carney challenged the outdated binary of “developed” versus “developing,” replacing it with a more accurate map of global power: one defined by networks, coalitions, and shared resilience.

This shift matters. Middle powers form the ballast of the international system. They are large enough to matter, too small to dominate, and numerous enough to shape outcomes when they act collectively. Carney’s insistence that “if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu” was not just a warning — it was an invitation. Canada, he argued, will help build new tables: flexible coalitions, pragmatic partnerships, and principled alignments suited to a fractured world.

Critically, this was not empty idealism. Carney paired moral language with strategic intent: domestic economic strength, defence capability, energy security, technological investment, and diversified trade. Values without power, he implied, are performative; power without values is coercive. Canada, under his vision, must have both.

The speech’s closing punch line captured its essence. When Carney urged countries and companies to “take their signs down” — to stop pretending that the old order still governs — he distilled the moment with rare honesty. This was not a call for chaos, but for realism. Not an abandonment of principles, but their reinvention.

Davos has heard many speeches about managing change. This one embraced it. Mark Carney did not simply diagnose the end of an era; he sketched the beginnings of another. In doing so, he pointed Canada — and many others — in the right direction.

(Maninder Singh Gill Is the Managing Director of Radio India, Surrey (BC) In Canada).