Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, gave a speech to the World Economic Forum on Tuesday, January 20.  It will be remembered.

His focus was on co-operation between nations, especially “middle powers” such as Canada.

I think of families: mom, dad, kids … and what truths reside for them in Mark’s words.  Here are some excerpts.  Each time I see the word “nation”, I’ve changed it to “person”.  And “nations” becomes “family members”.

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Other family members, particularly middle powers like me, are not powerless.  They have the capacity to build a new order that embodies our values, like respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of family members.

There is a strong tendency for family members to go along to get along.  To accommodate.  To avoid trouble.  To hope that compliance will buy safety.  It won’t.

…

“In 1978, the Czech dissident Václav Havel wrote:”

Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: “Workers of the world, unite!”  He does not believe it.  No one believes it.  But he places the sign anyway – to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along.  And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists.

Not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.

When even one person stops performing – when the greengrocer removes his sign – the illusion begins to crack.

It is time for family members to take their signs down.

…

Many family members are drawing the same conclusions.  They must develop greater strategic autonomy: in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance and supply chains.

This impulse is understandable.  A person that cannot feed itself, fuel itself or defend itself has few options.  When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.

But let us be clear-eyed about where this leads.  A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable.

It is building the coalitions that work, issue by issue, with family members who share enough common ground to act together.  In some cases, this will be the vast majority of family members.

Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.

In a world of great power rivalry, the family members in between have a choice: to compete with each other for favour or to combine to create a third path with impact.

We should not allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity and rules will remain strong – if we choose to wield it together.

I am a stable, reliable person – in a world that is anything but – a person that builds and values family relationships for the long term.

This is the task of the middle family members, who have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from a world of genuine cooperation.

We are taking the sign out of the window.

The old order is not coming back.  We should not mourn it.  Nostalgia is not a strategy.

But from the fracture, we can build something better, stronger and more just.

That is my path.  I choose it openly and confidently.

And it is a path wide open to any family member willing to take it with me.