This article originally appeared in The Hub.
By Stephen Nagy, October 28, 2025
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s ongoing Asian tour signals a welcome shift in Canada’s regional engagement. After six months in office, Carney appears to understand what his predecessors missed: Asian leaders value consistency and realism over grand gestures and progressive rhetoric.
The Indonesian free trade agreement and pursuit of an ASEAN-wide free trade agreement demonstrate concrete progress. Canada’s participation in sanctions invasion exercises and provision of dark vessel tracking technology to the Philippines shows we’re serious about regional security. Our Taiwan Strait transits and intelligence cooperation send the right signals about upholding the rules-based order.
Yet Carney’s itinerary reveals a troubling oversight. By skipping Japan and South Korea (beyond the APEC meeting), and visiting only one of our four ASEAN priority partners, he’s missing the relationship-building that drives Asian diplomacy. In a region where face time equals commitment, these omissions will be noticed. Asian partners who’ve watched Canadian prime ministers breeze through for photo-ops before disappearing for years are right to remain skeptical.
Still, Carney benefits from not being his predecessor. Trudeau’s Danang walkout, the disastrous India visit, and his naive pitch for a “progressive” trade deal with Xi Jinping’s China damaged Canada’s credibility. Asian capitals appreciate Carney’s technocratic approach—focusing on tangible economic and security cooperation rather than lecturing about values.
The elephant in the room remains China. From Seoul to Manila, our partners watch nervously as Ottawa signals renewed engagement with Beijing. They understand engagement is necessary, but worry Canada hasn’t internalized the hard lessons about Xi’s China—a regime that weaponizes economic ties and views compromise as weakness. Using China to hedge against Trump’s America is less clever realpolitik than it is dangerous naivety.
Our Asian allies know the scorpion and frog fable well. They’ve felt China’s sting through economic coercion, territorial aggression, and broken promises. They want Canada as a serious Indo-Pacific partner, but one that approaches Beijing with clear-eyed realism about its authoritarian ambitions.
Carney’s pragmatic style is refreshing, but style isn’t strategy. To be taken seriously in Asia, Canada needs sustained cabinet-level visits, deeper security partnerships, and patient relationship-building. Most critically, we must demonstrate we understand that Xi’s China is not a benign alternative to American unpredictability—it’s an authoritarian power seeking regional dominance.
The region is watching. They want more Canada, but a Canada that deals with Asia as it is, not as progressive idealists wish it were. Carney has made a decent start. Now he needs to show up regularly, engage consistently, and above all, approach China with the hard-headed realism our partners expect.
Stephen Nagy is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
