January is when illusions fade. Not resolutions — illusions.
After two weeks of conversations about U.S. National Security Strategy and Venezuela on The Brian Crombie Radio Hour with Stephen Nagy, Professor of Politics and International Studies at International Christian University in Tokyo; Matthew da Mota, Senior Policy Researcher at the Canadian SHIELD Institute; Patrick Leblond, Associate Professor Business and Public Policy at the University of Ottawa; and Ann Fitzgerald, Director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs (Laurier, UW and the Centre for International Governance Innovation), one conclusion is unavoidable:
The world has stopped pretending. The question is whether Canada has.
Stephen Nagy helped frame the global reality with unusual clarity.
What looks like chaos today is not disorder — it is deliberate unpredictability. Power exercised without diplomatic cushioning. A return to statecraft where uncertainty itself becomes leverage.
This is not new in history. What is new is the speed, the amplification, and the lingering assumption that the old rules would somehow reassert themselves automatically.
They won’t.
The post-Cold War moment when markets softened power, institutions restrained conflict, and values anchored alliances has ended.
Matthew da Mota forced the conversation one step further.
American imperial behaviour did not suddenly reappear with the U.S. raid in Venezuela. It never left. What changed is that it is now spoken plainly — and applied closer to home.
For decades, Canada benefited from this system while telling itself a comforting story: that sovereignty erosion elsewhere was regrettable but distant; that alignment with Washington insulated us.
It didn’t.
Sovereignty is rarely seized all at once. It erodes quietly through data, infrastructure, procurement rules, technical standards, platforms, and law.
Patrick Leblond then stripped away another illusion: that marginal adjustments would be enough.
Canada did not merely integrate with the U.S. economy — it over-concentrated: exports, infrastructure, defence supply chains, innovation capture.
Efficiency became dependency. And in a world where power is again exercised openly, dependency becomes vulnerability.
Leblond’s argument is not ideological. It is arithmetic. Incrementalism does not survive coercion.
If Canada wants genuine autonomy, it requires scale — serious capital, serious infrastructure, serious diversification, serious defence, and serious productivity growth. A giga response, not a polite one.
Ann Fitzgerald completed the picture — not by escalating rhetoric, but by lowering the temperature and raising the standard.
Her warning was quieter and more sobering: Canada does not merely lack capacity; it lacks capacity. It lacks coherence.
We are responding to a structural shift in global power with a whack-a-mole governance model — one issue at a time, one department at a time, one crisis at a time.
That is not strategy.
Strategy requires integration.
It requires priorities. It requires institutions capable of thinking across defence, trade, technology, data, energy, and national unity — simultaneously.
Fitzgerald’s point is essential: sovereignty cannot be defended piecemeal.
Data infrastructure, AI capability, cybersecurity, critical minerals, and energy systems are no longer simply “economic policy” or “innovation policy.” They are national security infrastructure.
And without a coherent framework — without expert advisory capacity, long-term objectives, and political discipline — even massive spending risks being misdirected.
Put simply:
• Nagy showed us how the world is changing.
• da Mota showed us how sovereignty erodes.
• Leblond showed us the scale of response required.
• Fitzgerald showed us why Canada is not currently organized to deliver it.
The warning is stark. This is not a temporary storm. It is a reordering of power.
Values still matter — but values without capacity are just language.
Allies still matter — but alliances without leverage are fragile.
Markets still matter — but markets do not substitute for strategy.
Canada does not need panic. But it does need clarity, coordination, and courage.
January is when countries decide whether they are serious.
History does not punish hope. It punishes drift.
And the most dangerous illusion of all is believing the world will wait while we decide.
