Carney, von der Leyen urged to draft ‘middle power’ charter at Canada-EU summit

A group of Canadian foreign-policy and trade experts is urging Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to use their late October summit to launch a charter of shared principles for middle powers.

Canada and the European Union are meeting in Montreal later this month to chart an “alliance for the future” that builds closer ties as both jurisdictions try to reduce reliance on the protectionist and unpredictable United States under Donald Trump.

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The charter, proposed by the Expert Group on Canada-U.S. Relations, would be open to other democracies and modelled on the 1941 Atlantic Charter between Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill that helped lay the foundations for the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Mr. Carney popularized the idea of middle-power co-operation with his January speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he argued that the post-Cold War rules-based order has suffered “a rupture, not a transition” and that middle powers like Canada must act together or risk being left on the menu.

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The Montreal summit is aimed at deepening trade ties and co-operation but the Expert Group, in a paper published Thursday, argues that Ottawa and Brussels should go beyond a transactional approach and draw up a “shared set of political and economic purpose,” or what it calls a “middle-power compact” for today.

Authors of the paper include former federal cabinet minister Perrin Beatty, onetime ambassador Jonathan Fried, ex-trade negotiator John Weekes, and former deputy chief of staff to the prime minister, Brian Clow.

They argue that if Canada wants to build substantive relations with other middle-power countries it has to lay out a broader vision of principles that would form the foundation for this co-operation.

The Atlantic Charter had no formal status but declared that Britain and the United States sought no territorial gains, opposed territorial changes made against the wishes of the peoples concerned, and supported every country’s right to choose its own government.

The eight-point statement also pledged freer trade and economic co-operation, freedom of the seas, freedom from fear and want, and the disarmament of aggressor countries. It became a founding blueprint for the postwar order as well as the United Nations, the Bretton Woods economic system and the alliance anchored by NATO.

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The Expert Group says the international order established after the Second World War has been severely compromised.

The United States, one of the signatories to the Atlantic Charter, “no longer plays by the rules it itself developed and negotiated,” it says. Washington has “weaponized the bonds of commerce forged over 80 years of interdependence to pursue economic advantage,” even though this causes economic harm globally, the group says.

The group says the charter should reaffirm the Atlantic Charter but go beyond this and lay out five principles for a digital age, where the defence of democracy depends on the integrity of information systems and data and digital infrastructure as much as military strength and capability.

Canada and the EU should commit to ensuring that technology does not undermine human dignity, human security and democratic self-government “or for that matter,” threaten humanity’s very survival.”

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The group lays out five principles for a new charter.

First: defending democracy at home through free and fair elections, peaceful transfer of power, freedom of expression and free press as well as the protection of minority rights.

Second: Every country must have the right to determine its future free from force or coercion, including a pledge of non-interference in other countries’ democratic processes and joint efforts to fight disinformation and anti-democratic movements.

Third: the need for joint efforts among middle powers to reduce vulnerabilities in critical supply chains, financial services, energy, technology, infrastructure and defence industries and pledges not to use trade as instruments of coercion. This includes the principle that every country retains the sovereign right to choose its own economic or security partners.

Fourth: middle powers agree to combine their strength through joint investment, production and shared capabilities in defence, critical technologies, energy, research and infrastructure with the goal of achieving the scale needed to deter aggression.

Fifth: an agreement among middle powers to uphold international law, strengthen multilateral institutions and act urgently on global challenges that no country can meet alone, including climate change, biodiversity loss, pandemics, food and water insecurity, unchecked development of artificial intelligence and the spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.

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The group says Japan, South Korea, Britain, Australia and New Zealand should be invited to help shape this middle-power charter from the outset. It would then be open to any democracy that is prepared to uphold its principles.

“The door would also be left open to a future U.S. administration that chose to adhere” to the new charter, the group proposes.

The paper, titled A Middle Power Charter for a Troubled World, was published jointly by Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy.

The remainder of its 12 authors include Fen Hampson, a Carleton professor of international affairs, former business leader Thomas d’Aquino, ex-diplomat Colin Robertson, onetime MP Martha Hall Findlay, former Ontario deputy minister Drew Fagan, international trade lawyer Lawrence Herman, former federal deputy minister Tim Sargent and policy expert Heather Exner-Pirot.