{"id":250036,"date":"2026-01-24T20:13:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T20:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/250036\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T20:13:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T20:13:09","slug":"pm-mark-carney-says-weve-entered-a-new-world-order-what-does-that-really-mean-for-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/250036\/","title":{"rendered":"PM Mark Carney says we\u2019ve entered a \u201cnew world order.\u201d What does that really mean for Canada?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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When Prime Minister Mark Carney stood at Davos this week (21 January 2026) and declared that \u201cif you\u2019re not at the table, you\u2019re on the menu,\u201d he was describing a world where power matters and weakness invites predation. He is correct. Although his warning was meant as a dig at the United States, it applies with devastating precision to Canada itself, a country that has systematically dismantled its defense capabilities while facing, as Carney himself identifies, the greatest security threat: China.<\/p>\n

The contradiction is stark. In April 2025, during the federal election campaign, Carney named China as Canada\u2019s foremost national security threat, citing foreign interference, Arctic ambitions, and Beijing\u2019s alliance with Russia. Eight months later, he travelled to Beijing to announce a \u201cstrategic partnership\u201d with President Xi Jinping, easing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and hailing \u201cmuch alignment\u201d on geopolitical issues. Between these two moments lies the story of a country that boldly talks sovereignty while practicing numbing dependence, that identifies threats while appeasing them, that gets offended by Donald Trump\u2019s musings but not by Chinese attacks, and that has spent the last two generations hollowing out the military capabilities required to defend its own territory.<\/p>\n

The evidence reveals a country that has abandoned its basic duty to defend itself, consistently failed to meet commitments to its allies, and made itself entirely dependent on American protection, the arms of a foreign power, even as it strains that relationship through neglect and now shunning. Canada now favours the adversary it should fear most, instead of the friend that has sustained and supported it.<\/p>\n

The Systematic Abandonment of NATO Commitments<\/p>\n

Canada has failed to defend itself. The defense failure begins with numbers that successive governments have refused to meet. In 2014, following Russia\u2019s annexation of Crimea, NATO allies agreed to spend at least two percent of GDP on defense. Canada has failed to meet this commitment for eleven consecutive years. Parliamentary Budget Office projections showed Canada reaching only 1.29 percent of GDP in 2024-25, rising to a peak of 1.49 percent in 2025-26 on Carney\u2019s watch, before falling back to 1.42 percent by 2029-30.<\/p>\n

The Trudeau government promised the two percent target by 2032, eighteen years after the original commitment, and only after sustained pressure from Washington. Defense Minister Bill Blair accelerated this timeline to 2027 in January 2025. When Carney formed government in June 2025, he announced an additional $9.3 billion in defense spending to reach two percent by year-end, but by December 2025, Defense Minister David McGuinty could only express confidence that Canada was \u201con its way\u201d rather than confirming achievement. These pledges came only after years of American threats about Article 5 guarantees and Trump\u2019s humiliating suggestions that Canada should become the 51st state.<\/p>\n

The two percent figure itself understates the damage. NATO\u2019s new target, agreed at The Hague summit in June 2025, calls for 3.5 percent of GDP on core defense by 2035, plus an additional 1.5 percent on defence-related infrastructure, a total of five percent. While all NATO allies were expected to meet the two percent threshold in 2025, sixteen allies barely exceeded it, spending between 2.0 and 2.1 percent. Canada\u2019s failure to reach even the obsolete two percent target reveals how far behind the country has fallen. Poland spends over four percent. The Baltic states exceed three percent. Canada ranks among the alliance\u2019s most delinquent members despite being among the wealthiest.<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s prosperity stems from its people\u2019s work, development, and ingenuity. But saving trillions on defense over decades because the United States had it covered is a substantial part of why and how Canada became more prosperous than it otherwise would have been. That prosperity now funds trade diversification toward Beijing rather than the defense capabilities required to maintain sovereignty.<\/p>\n

The consequences extend beyond GDP percentages to capability. In fiscal year 2022-23, only 61 percent of Canadian force elements were ready for operations according to established targets, a ten percent decrease from the previous year. Just 43.9 percent of aerospace fleets were serviceable to meet training, readiness, and operational requirements. The Royal Canadian Navy reported in late 2023 that only 6,226 naval personnel could be considered part of the \u201ceffective strength\u201d of the RCN, making several ships inactive due to crew shortages. By late 2025, Vice-Admiral Angus Topshee confirmed the Navy\u2019s personnel problem remained dire, with ships docked for lack of sailors.<\/p>\n

This reflects systematic neglect by a political class that treated defense spending as discretionary rather than existential. Between 2015 and 2024, Canada enjoyed relative peace and prosperity while its military withered. Training facilities operated below capacity. Equipment aged beyond replacement schedules. Recruitment systems collapsed under bureaucratic dysfunction. The message to allies was unmistakable: Canada shamefully would not defend itself and expected others to do so on its behalf.<\/p>\n

The Recruitment and Retention Death Spiral<\/p>\n

Between April 2022 and March 2025, approximately 192,000 people applied to join the Canadian Armed Forces. Only one in thirteen made it through the recruitment pipeline. The CAF planned to recruit nearly 20,000 new recruits but enrolled only around 15,000, falling short by 25 percent.<\/p>\n

The Auditor General\u2019s October 2025 report documented systematic failures. More than half of applicants either stopped responding to CAF recruiters or voluntarily withdrew within 60 days. The recruitment target time was 100 to 150 days, but the median time was between 245 and 271 days, nearly twice as long. Security screening backlogs rose from approximately 20,000 to almost 23,000. Information technology systems were disconnected, requiring manual re-entry across eight platforms. The Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School operated at just 80 percent capacity due to instructor shortages.<\/p>\n

Retention has collapsed even as recruitment improved. Attrition rates increased sharply, with 5,026 members leaving between 2024 and 2025 compared with 4,256 during the previous year. A leaked internal report revealed that new recruits were leaving at rates higher than the overall force, frustrated by insufficient trainers, equipment, and training facilities. The shortfall remained around 13,000 to 14,000 personnel by 2025 despite recruiting gains because the CAF was losing trained members faster than it could replace them.<\/p>\n

Charlotte Duval-Lantoine of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute noted the military seemed to approach the crisis \u201cin a linear, one-step-at-a-time fashion: fix recruiting, then fix the training system.\u201d The system required simultaneous reform. Instead, the Trudeau government ordered National Defense to find $810 million in savings in 2024, followed by $851 million in 2025-26 and $907 million thereafter. The retention strategy office was shut down, its staff reassigned.<\/p>\n

Ships remain docked for lack of sailors. Army battalions operate below optimal strength. The Royal Canadian Air Force struggles to retain pilots and ground crews. These gaps directly affect Canada\u2019s ability to meet NORAD and NATO commitments, to patrol its Arctic waters, to defend its own territory. Canada\u2019s word cannot be trusted.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s Systematic Violations of Canadian Sovereignty<\/p>\n

Against this backdrop of military deterioration, China has engaged in a campaign of sovereignty violation across multiple domains, from kidnapping Canadian citizens to operating illegal police stations on Canadian soil, from surveillance balloons crossing Canadian airspace to direct threats against citizens and elected MPs.<\/p>\n

The most brazen example remains the detention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. On December 10, 2018, ten days after Canadian authorities arrested Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. extradition warrant, Chinese state security grabbed both men. Kovrig was walking home from dinner with his pregnant partner in Beijing when he was seized. He was blindfolded, handcuffed, thrown into an SUV, and taken to a padded cell where he would spend the next six months in complete isolation under 24-hour fluorescent lighting.<\/p>\n

For 1,019 days, China held these men as hostages. Kovrig endured six months of solitary confinement and daily interrogations lasting six to nine hours, locked in a chair, with food rations cut for being uncooperative. The lights never turned off. He had no access to lawyers and limited consular visits. Spavor was convicted of espionage and sentenced to eleven years in prison. Kovrig\u2019s trial concluded without a verdict. Both were released on September 24, 2021, hours after Meng was allowed to return to China following a deferred prosecution agreement with the United States.<\/p>\n

China maintained throughout that the cases were unrelated. The simultaneous release demolished that fiction. This was hostage diplomacy: seize foreign nationals, subject them to psychological torture, and use them as bargaining chips. Prime Minister Trudeau flaccidly called their detention \u201carbitrary.\u201d The correct term is kidnapping by a foreign state.<\/p>\n

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The violations extended beyond kidnapping. In 2022, reports emerged that Chinese officials were operating clandestine police stations in Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto. These stations, officially described by Beijing as \u201cservice centers,\u201d were documented by the NGO Safeguard Defenders as part of a global network of at least 102 such stations in 53 countries. The RCMP launched investigations in October 2022.<\/p>\n

Testimony before parliamentary committees revealed these stations engaged in harassment, intimidation, and forced repatriation operations. Laura Harth of Safeguard Defenders identified at least three \u201cpersuasion to return\u201d operations on Canadian soil. Former RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki testified that the stations served as sites for \u201cinterference, intimidation or harassment,\u201d not conventional police functions. She never did much about it. The RCMP confirmed investigations at multiple sites, stating by 2023 that illegal activity had been disrupted and stations had ceased operating, though investigations remained ongoing. The U.S. arrested two individuals in New York in April 2023 for operating a similar station, marking the first criminal charges anywhere. Canada laid no charges.<\/p>\n

Chinese infiltration extended to research universities and sensitive research facilities. The National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg became the center of a security breach involving two Chinese scientists, Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng, who were escorted from the facility in July 2019. RCMP and CSIS investigated their potential policy breaches and transfer of intellectual property to China\u2019s Wuhan Institute of Virology. Both scientists were fired in January 2021. The incident raised alarm about Chinese infiltration of Canadian research institutions dealing with deadly pathogens.<\/p>\n

Conservative MP Michael Chong revealed in May 2023 that CSIS had intelligence showing China planned to target him and his family in retaliation for his efforts to recognize the persecution of Uyghurs as genocide. Chinese diplomat Wei Jo, based in Toronto, was involved in these intimidation operations. The RCMP opened an investigation, one of more than 100 foreign interference investigations the force was conducting by mid-2023. Chong stated he was not informed about the threats until they became public through media reports, despite CSIS drafting a memo in 2021. There is still no word on all those \u201cinvestigations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Threats extended beyond politicians to cultural organizations. In 2025, Shen Yun Performing Arts received multiple bomb and mass shooting threats at venues across Canada shortly before performances. Fifty-four Canadian parliamentarians issued a joint statement condemning China\u2019s transnational repression in July 2025, noting the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s campaign \u201cclearly exemplifies the very dangers the G7 has called on the world to resist together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then there was the surveillance balloon. On January 30, 2023, a Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon entered Canadian airspace over the Yukon and Northwest Territories after crossing Alaska. It flew southeast over British Columbia before re-entering the United States in northern Idaho on January 31. The balloon, approximately 200 feet tall and carrying sophisticated surveillance equipment, crossed the Canadian Arctic, Alberta, and Saskatchewan.<\/p>\n

The public learned about it only after the balloon was spotted over Montana on February 1, hovering near intercontinental ballistic missile installations at Malmstrom Air Force Base. Former Defense Minister Anita Anand explained Canada did not shoot down the balloon because authorities determined it \u201cposed no imminent risk to Canadians.\u201d A foreign state\u2019s surveillance platform crossed Canadian territory, gathering intelligence over military and civilian infrastructure, violating Canadian sovereignty, and the government\u2019s response was to monitor it and say nothing publicly until American detection forced disclosure.<\/p>\n

Former Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino justified the silence by citing \u201csensitivity of the timing of the information\u201d and the need to avoid \u201ccompromising our operations.\u201d The balloon incident revealed what General Glen VanHerck, commander of U.S. Northern Command, called a \u201cdomain awareness gap\u201d in NORAD\u2019s detection systems. The gap existed because radar systems were set to ignore data below certain airspeeds, allowing balloons to evade detection. Only after the 2023 incident did NORAD adjust its systems.<\/p>\n

The Foreign Interference Commission that concluded in January 2025 called China \u201cthe most persistent and sophisticated foreign interference threat to Canada.\u201d The commission documented attempted interference in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections, intimidation of politicians, and harassment of diaspora communities. In February 2025, a government task force reported a coordinated state-backed campaign on WeChat targeting Chrystia Freeland. Conservative candidate Joe Tay faced an arrest warrant from Hong Kong police and a Chinese social media repression campaign during the 2025 election.<\/p>\n

This is the threat environment Canada faces: a hostile foreign power that kidnaps its citizens, infiltrates its research institutions, operates illegal police stations on its soil, flies surveillance balloons through its airspace, threatens its elected officials, intimidates its diaspora communities, and interferes in its democratic processes. And Canada\u2019s response? Carney went to Beijing eight months after identifying China as the greatest security threat, announced a \u201cstrategic partnership,\u201d reduced tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, and found \u201cmuch alignment\u201d with Xi Jinping on Greenland.<\/p>\n

The Rhetoric-Reality Gap<\/p>\n

The contrast between Carney\u2019s campaign rhetoric and the reality of governing is instructive. Before the April 2025 election, he identified China as Canada\u2019s biggest security threat \u201cfrom a geopolitical sense.\u201d He warned of foreign interference, Arctic ambitions, and China\u2019s partnership with Russia. After the election, facing Trump\u2019s tariff threats and rhetoric about Canadian annexation, Carney pivoted. In December 2025, he outlined \u201csecurity guardrails\u201d while seeking to \u201creset the relationship with Beijing.\u201d His \u201cred lines\u201d warning came in these December remarks about establishing boundaries for engagement with China even while pursuing trade.<\/p>\n

By January 2026, he was in Beijing signing agreements. The tariff deal allowed up to 49,000 Chinese EVs into Canada annually, rolling back the 100 percent tariff imposed in 2024 in coordination with the United States. China agreed to reduce tariffs on Canadian canola seed from 85 percent to approximately 15 percent. Lobsters and peas would see tariff relief.<\/p>\n

Carney described this as pragmatism in a \u201cnew world order.\u201d He noted that dealing with China had become \u201cmore predictable\u201d than dealing with the United States. This assessment came from a prime minister whose country depends entirely on American protection while simultaneously seeking trade deals with the adversary that kidnapped Canadian citizens, operated police stations on Canadian soil, and flew surveillance equipment through Canadian airspace. One must point out that Canada has predictably been a national defense parasite.<\/p>\n

The governing logic appears straightforward: Trump\u2019s tariffs and sovereignty rhetoric created an opening to diversify trade relationships. China offers a massive market. Canada needs economic options beyond its reliance on the United States. This logic ignores the security foundations that enable such economic maneuvering. Canada can diversify its trade because American power guarantees North American security. Remove that guarantee, as Trump has threatened, and Canada\u2019s vulnerability is exposed.<\/p>\n

Carney\u2019s \u201cnot at the table, you\u2019re on the menu\u201d formulation was meant to describe American unilateralism. But it ironically applies with devastating precision to Canada\u2019s position vis-\u00e0-vis China. Canada is not at the defense table. It has systematically dismantled the military capabilities required to defend its territory, patrol its waters, protect its airspace, or deter aggression. It has failed to meet NATO commitments for decades. Its recruitment and retention systems have collapsed. Ships sit docked. Aircraft remain grounded. Personnel shortages undermine every operational domain. But we will help \u201cdefend\u201d Greenland!? Carney can boast a desire to defend Greenland, whose territory is about 40 percent of Canada\u2019s Arctic land, but cannot even defend its own Arctic expanse on its own.<\/p>\n

And while Canada neglected its defense obligations, China engaged in sustained Canadian sovereignty violations. Not bluster. Not hypothetical threats. Actual violations: kidnapping citizens, infiltrating institutions, stealing intellectual property, operating illegal police infrastructure, surveillance operations, election interference, intimidation campaigns. The pattern is clear and documented. Yet Canada\u2019s response has been investigation without prosecution, condemnation without consequence, and rhetoric without deterrence. Canada is now a \u201cpartner\u201d of Beijing\u2019s regime.<\/p>\n

The American Security Guarantee Canada Takes for Granted<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s defense posture rests on an assumption so fundamental it rarely receives explicit acknowledgment: the United States will defend Canada regardless of Canada\u2019s own efforts. This assumption has governed Canadian defense policy for decades. It explains how a country with the world\u2019s longest coastline, vast Arctic territories, and enormous natural resources can maintain a military so small and underequipped that it cannot patrol its own waters or defend its own airspace without American assistance.<\/p>\n

The assumption is not entirely unfounded. Geography, history, and strategic logic bind American and Canadian security together. No hostile power can threaten the continental United States without crossing Canadian territory or waters. Therefore, America defends Canada to defend itself. NORAD functions as a binational command. The two countries share intelligence, coordinate operations, and integrate defense planning. For seventy years, this arrangement has worked.<\/p>\n

But assumptions that worked for seventy years can collapse in less than seven months. Trump\u2019s rhetoric about Canada becoming the 51st state was not simply provocation. It reflected the na\u00efve Trudeauvian world when PM Trudeau declared to Trump that U.S.-imposed tariffs could end Canada. Trudeau\u2019s Canada failed to see the transactional worldview in which alliances are conditional, security guarantees are negotiable, and free-riding has consequences. When Trump demanded NATO allies meet the two percent spending target, then raised it to five percent, he was making explicit what had been implicit: American protection is not automatic, and countries that don\u2019t defend themselves will find themselves on the menu.<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s scramble to appear to reach two percent spending by 2025-26 came only after Trump\u2019s threats made the alternative unthinkable. The $9.3 billion announced in June 2025 was emergency spending to avoid American abandonment. This is not a defense policy. It is panic spending triggered by the realization that assumptions are not guarantees.<\/p>\n

The deeper problem is capability, not just budgets. Even if Canada reaches two percent of GDP spending, years of neglect cannot be reversed overnight. Personnel shortfalls of 13,000 to 14,000 take years to address through recruiting and training. Ships require years to build. Aircraft require years to procure. The F-35 contract for 88 aircraft extends into the 2030s. The River-class destroyer program won\u2019t deliver ships for over a decade.<\/p>\n

Canada has spent decades making itself dependent on American protection while simultaneously talking tough and taking that protection for granted. The trade diversification toward China, announced by the same prime minister who identified China as Canada\u2019s greatest security threat, sends a clear message about priorities: face-saving convenience matters more than accepting the embarrassing reality. Canada will seek Chinese markets while expecting American protection. This is not sovereignty. It is dependence with diversification.<\/p>\n

The Stakes<\/p>\n

Carney was correct when he said that countries not at the table become what\u2019s on the menu. He was describing Canada\u2019s weak position.<\/p>\n

Canada seeks the commercial graces of a hostile power that has demonstrated willingness to kidnap its citizens, operate illegal police infrastructure on its soil, violate its airspace, interfere in its elections, and intimidate its politicians. Canada has systematically failed to meet its obligations to the alliance that guarantees its security. For years, it ignored the two percent NATO commitment. It allowed recruitment and retention systems to collapse. It let operational readiness fall below acceptable levels. It docked ships for lack of crew and grounded aircraft for lack of maintenance. Most of this for the sake of avoiding the embarrassment of dealing with a president who is calling out Canada\u2019s entitled parasitical tendency.<\/p>\n

And when forced to confront these failures, Canada\u2019s response was to seek trade deals with the adversary while expecting the ally it neglected to continue providing protection.<\/p>\n

This is not a sustainable position. It is not even a coherent position. Canada is not at the defense table because Canada chose not to invest in defense. Canada is on the menu because predatory powers recognize weakness when they see it.<\/p>\n

The question is not whether Canada can afford to defend itself. The question is whether Canada\u2019s political class will acknowledge that sovereignty requires capability, that alliances require burden-sharing, and that protection is not automatic. The answer, for decades, has been no. Perhaps the shock of American threats, coupled with additional Chinese predation, will produce a different answer. But rhetoric about being at the table means nothing when you\u2019ve sold your chair, and you\u2019re the meal China has been enjoying.<\/p>\n

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