An Asian lesson for Mark Carney

The last one came to me from my recent stay in Japan, where I was working on a report that you will read soon.

It’s not easy to get interviews in Japan! We have to write, rewrite, explain our approach, even send a list of questions in advance, which is unthinkable for us. To gain access to politicians, the Japanese journalist who supported me for part of the report even had to go in person to the offices of several targeted interviewees to plead my case.

Many people declined, but others accepted. And that’s where the magic happened. When you say yes to an interview in Japan, you really say yes. My interlocutors were all on time. A former chief of staff even arrived 15 minutes early. And they were all completely present. Ready to give me more than an hour of their time and attention, without any distractions.

After my meetings, I received ultra-personalized thank you emails highlighting the richness of the exchanges. In a world that is overheating, this Japanese experience felt like a puish-puish of thermal water on my face, but also made me aware of the speed at which I work, jumping from one interview to another, from one column to another, from one country to another.

Why am I telling you about it today? Because the Japanese lesson I received on how to build connections with new sources should also be useful to the Canadian Prime Minister who was in Asia at the same time as me.

In nine days, Mr. Carney increased the number of meetings and handshakes with the objective of establishing new partnerships in order to help our economy “dependent on a single partner” to become more “resilient to global shocks”. He could have used essentially the same words to talk about our defense.

In nine days, he met the Japanese Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, to establish a first contact. He signed a new security and defense partnership with South Korean President Lee Jae-Myung. “A first of its kind,” according to Mr. Carney, who sets the table for the potential purchase of 12 South Korean submarines.

He also began free trade negotiations with the Thai prime minister, discussed a strategic partnership with Chile, and agreed on other upcoming negotiations with the Philippines. And all this while he met the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, to smoke the first curls of a peace pipe after eight years of cold sweats.

A veritable diplomatic marathon propelled by the urgency to act while our neighbor to the South continues to be capricious and angry. The great Asian powers, who also face the unpredictability of Donald Trump, share this feeling of urgency. The outstretched hand of Canada, which presents itself as a reliable ally respecting international rules, comes at the right time.

This session of speed dating should only be the first step. Canada, which was relatively absent in Asia in recent decades, is slowly regaining its place there since the adoption in 2022 of the Indo-Pacific Strategy, which was accompanied by a budget of 2 billion dollars. This budget allows the country to increase its diplomatic, military, economic and academic presence in this immense, essential region. Last week, Mark Carney reaped the first fruits of this conscious, but still very young, investment.

“Southeast Asian countries say they are interested in partnerships with Canada. Like us, they have a powerful neighbor – China, in their case – from which they want to break away, but without alienating it,” notes Yann Roche, who currently directs the Chair of Asian and Indo-Pacific Studies at the Center for International Studies and Research at the University of Montreal (CERIUM).

“We must continue to show that we are serious in our recommitment,” he adds. It takes time to build connections. And even when we establish an effective and functional relationship, there will always remain a distance linked to profound cultural differences,” says the geography professor, who has been surveying the region for decades.

He notes that Canada still has a long way to go to get rid of the lapdog image of the United States that sticks to it. “This is particularly the image that China gives of us in the region, particularly following the Huawei affair” when Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, daughter of the founder of the Chinese company, at the request of the United States.

In other words, Canada must not seem like the jilted lover who is looking for new flames, but who will run back into the marital bed if the ex beckons.

Instead, it must take concrete actions, including improving the Indo-Pacific Strategy, to show that it wants to establish solid and lasting partnerships with the Indo-Pacific countries that demonstrate interest. Because in his case, sincere thank you emails will not be enough.