Exclusive: Mark Carney talks to Tyler Brûlé in Tokyo

Canada's prime minister on spending big on defence, the middle-power moment and Takaichi cake diplomacy

It has been a busy March for CanForce One (the Royal Canadian Air Force’s VIP A330), with prime minister Mark Carney calling on leaders in India, Australia and Japan to reset relations, talk defence, sell Canada’s best wares and build fresh alliances.

Off the back of that speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where Carney rallied middle powers to unite and positioned Canada as a different type of leader on the world stage, I caught up with the prime minister at the Canadian embassy in Tokyo on the last day of his tour.

A video of the conversation is available here, but Monocle subscribers can access the full story and reportage on Monocle.com (and if you're not subscribed, do so today or pre-order your April issue).

The Davos review:

“I feel good about it because the message did get through – and more broadly than I would have anticipated. It’s the popular take-up of it. Whether it’s on the streets of Japan, Australia or Canada, a number of people will come up to me and will have heard the speech and agreed with the message. That tells me one thing: that people were already there; they had already figured it out themselves. It just hadn’t been expressed by someone like me.”

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On creating a new trading bloc:

“This is not 'Middle powers of the world unite', with a T-shirt. You won’t agree with everybody on everything or with the same intensity and prioritisation. The Coalition of the Willing, which is backstopping Ukraine, is quite broad. But it’s not everybody.”

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The future of Canada’s defence spending:

“To put some numbers to it, over the next decade, Canada will invest about ca$500bn [€319bn]. It’s a huge number. A significant proportion of that, as you would expect, is in defence – submarines, aircraft, drones and materiel that are necessary, particularly to protect the Arctic, which is where the threats are rising. But just as much, if not more, is spent on what is called 'dual use'.”

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A video of the conversation is available here, but Monocle subscribers can access the full story and reportage on Monocle.com (and if you're not subscribed, do so today or pre-order your April issue).