Did Carney just signal a massive shift in Canada’s foreign policy direction?

PM said the old rules-based international order is over — and was sort of a mirage

Darren Major · CBC News · Posted: Jan 20, 2026

Prime Minister Mark Carney turned some heads in Switzerland on Tuesday with his stark assessment of the current state of global affairs.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Carney said that not only is the old international order over and “not coming back” — but it had been a mirage all along.

“We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim,” the prime minister said.

‘The old order is not coming back,’ Carney says in provocative speech at Davos
Read Mark Carney’s full speech on middle powers navigating a rapidly changing world

Sen. Peter Boehm, a former diplomat, told CBC’s Power & Politics that Carney’s remarks were the “most consequential” delivered by a Canadian prime minister since Louis St. Laurent — minister responsible external affairs at the time — laid out Canada’s post-Second World War foreign policy direction in 1947.

Sen. Peter Boehm tells Power & Politics that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech addressing world leaders in Davos, Switzerland, was the ‘most consequential’ by a Canadian prime minister in decades. Former Canadian diplomat Louise Blais says it puts ‘Canada at the centre’ of global middle powers as they grapple with a changing world.
“[St. Laurent] set out the parameters of the rules-based international order as it then was … and it’s like Prime Minister Carney’s speech today was a bookend to that,” Boehm told host David Cochrane.

“It’s been almost 80 years. We’re going to have to think differently now and he provided all of the rationale for it.”…

Read the rest of the story here.

Source: CBC News

Read the Canadian PM’s speech here.