By: Owais Hasan
Canadian Freelance Journalist
For decades, the metaphor was unavoidable: Canada was the mouse sleeping next to an elephant, forced to twitch whenever the great beast stirred. We integrated our supply chains, harmonized our defense procurement, and generally followed Washington’s lead in matters of war and peace. We did so not out of blind loyalty, but out of a pragmatic belief that the “rules-based international order”—with the United States as its undisputed sheriff—would ultimately protect our interests.
That order, as Prime Minister Mark Carney bluntly declared at Davos in January, “is not coming back.” And perhaps it is time to stop mourning it. Perhaps it is time for Canada to finally grow up .
As the United States plunges deeper into military confrontation with Iran—without a United Nations mandate and without meaningful consultation with its allies—Canada finds itself at a historic crossroads . For the first time in a generation, we are being forced to ask a question that cuts to the heart of our national identity: When Washington calls for war, are we still required to answer?
The answer, emerging from Ottawa these days, is a tentative but unmistakable “no.”
When U.S. and Israeli forces launched airstrikes against Iran, Prime Minister Carney issued a statement of support, but immediately qualified it with words that would have been unthinkable for a Canadian leader a decade ago: “with regret.” He criticized the United States and Israel for acting “without engaging the United Nations or consulting with allies, including Canada” . He stressed that Canada was “not party to the military buildup or planning” and that it was “not envisioned that we would be part of it” .
This is not the reflexive alignment we have seen in past conflicts. This is the sound of a middle power finding its spine.
The ‘Elbows Up’ Moment
To understand why Canada is changing, one need only look at how Washington has treated its so-called “closest ally” over the past year. President Donald Trump has repeatedly mused about making Canada the 51st state. His administration has floated tariffs that would cripple Canadian industries, threatened to intervene in our sovereignty, and treated our prime minister with open contempt . When Trump told Carney to remember that Canada “lives” only because of the United States, he inadvertently did what decades of polite diplomacy could not: he unified Canadians across party lines in a shared commitment to strategic autonomy .
“We have been too reliant on geography and on others to protect us,” Carney admitted last month as he unveiled a radical new defense strategy. “That created vulnerabilities we can no longer afford” .
The new “Build, Partner, Buy” strategy is a revolution disguised as a procurement policy. For generations, Canada has dutifully purchased American military hardware, integrating our defenses with theirs until the two became nearly indistinguishable. The new plan flips that logic on its head: Canada will now prioritize purchasing from domestic firms; failing that, it will partner with allied nations (preferably European) to co-develop equipment and share intellectual property; only as a last resort will it buy “off-the-shelf” from the United States .
The goal is to increase the share of defense contracts awarded to Canadian firms from roughly 30 percent to 70 percent . That is not just an industrial policy; it is a declaration of independence.
The Coalition of the Wary
This is happening just in time. The current conflict in the Middle East has exposed the perils of blind allegiance. As CBC News recently reported, Washington’s allies have formed what might be called a “coalition of the wary”—nations quick to insist they were not involved in the strikes, careful to avoid endorsing the legal basis for the war, but too fearful of Trump’s wrath to openly condemn it . It is an awkward, undignified posture for any sovereign nation.
Canada has been here before. We refused to join the Vietnam War. We stayed out of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In both cases, we paid a price in Washington’s goodwill, but we preserved something more valuable: our integrity and our adherence to international law .
Today, the case for staying out of a wider Middle East war is even stronger. There is no UN Security Council resolution authorizing force. There is no NATO consensus. There is only the “new Monroe Doctrine” emanating from Washington, which treats the entire Western Hemisphere—and increasingly, the world—as an American sphere of influence where allies exist to serve, not to deliberate .
The ‘Middle Power’ Pivot
Carney’s vision for Canada’s future rests on a simple insight: In a world of predatory great powers, middle-sized nations must pool their sovereignty to protect it. Speaking in Davos, he urged countries like Canada to stop negotiating with hegemons “bilaterally, from weakness” and instead build coalitions that can act together, “issue by issue, with partners who share enough common ground” .
This is not anti-Americanism. It is realism. The United States will pursue its interests as it defines them. Canada must do the same.
And our interests increasingly lie elsewhere. Over the past year, Ottawa has signed trade and security agreements across four continents, from Indonesia to Qatar to Ukraine. The premiers have led 20 international trade missions in six months. The goal is ambitious: to double non-U.S. exports within a decade .
More significantly, Canada recently joined the European massive rearmament fund, signaling a pivot toward European defense cooperation that would have been unthinkable when NATO’s center of gravity lay exclusively in Washington . As Carney put it, strategic autonomy “does not mean isolation. It means being strong enough to be a partner of choice, rather than a dependent” .
The Test to Come
None of this will be easy. The United States remains Canada’s largest trading partner and most important military ally. The gravitational pull of geography is not something one cancels with a speech or a strategy document. As one Canadian shopper told a reporter, replacing American products with Canadian alternatives is admirable in theory but difficult in practice when entire industries have been integrated for generations .
And the pressure is already mounting. Experts warn that if the conflict with Iran drags on, Trump will demand more than rhetorical support. He will ask for bases, for overflight rights, for naval assets. He will dangle the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) review as leverage. He will, as he always does, make it personal .
That is when we will discover whether Carney’s Davos rhetoric was merely words or whether it represented a genuine reorientation of Canadian foreign policy. Will we hold firm, as we did in 2003? Or will we blink, as we have so often before?
A New Kind of Patriotism
There is something profoundly hopeful in this moment. For years, Canadian nationalism was defined by what we were not—not American, not aggressive, not imperial. It was a thin, defensive identity, heavy on health care and politeness but light on substance.
Today, a thicker patriotism is emerging. It is defined by what we will become: a nation capable of defending its sovereignty, diversifying its partnerships, and standing on its own principles even when they diverge from Washington’s.
When Pierre Trudeau famously described Canada’s predicament, he warned that “living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”
Fifty years later, the elephant is no longer even-tempered. It is thrashing, unpredictable, and increasingly indifferent to the comfort of its bedmates. The mouse has two choices: continue to be crushed by every twitch, or learn to find a new place to sleep.
Canada is finally, fitfully, learning to move. In doing so, we are not just protecting our own integrity. We are modeling something essential for the 21st century: how middle powers can resist the gravitational pull of great-power conflict and build a foreign policy worthy of a sovereign people.
The old order is dead. Nostalgia is not a strategy. But courage, it turns out, still is .
*Owais Hasan* is a Master of Statistics; Data Analyst; Political affairs analyst with over 15 years of experience in monitoring Canadian policies and global trade relationships. He holds a Master Degree and possesses an extensive Canadian Political experience.
