Canada is adapting to a more volatile global order, but its biggest strategic advantage may already be inside the country. In this moment of rupture, Canada’s most strategic asset is not a new military alliance, or another trade agreement, or even a natural resource. Rather, it is the exiled professionals who possess the grounded knowledge and much-needed expertise of the complex regions Canada is trying to navigate. However, those voices are being excluded from policy making spaces where they are most needed due to institutional barriers. Canada is choosing to be less informed by seeking the knowledge it needs abroad, when this knowledge already exists within its borders.

In his Davos address, Prime Minister Mark Carney described a reality middle powers can no longer ignore: the rules-based order has not merely shifted, it has fractured. For Canada, his prescription is a move toward strategic resilience through “variable geometry,” a pragmatic approach that prioritizes flexible, issue-by-issue partnerships built on shared interests and common values rather than fixed dependencies. This announcement has been accompanied by Canada’s deeper engagement with unconventional partners, including China and Qatar.

Carney is right to insist that nostalgia is not a strategy. But if Canada is to withstand pressure while upholding its commitments to human rights and democracy, it will need more than new external partnerships. It will also need a far deeper understanding of the political and economic systems it is now engaging.

Across the country lives a cohort of politically experienced, transnationally connected exiles, former diplomats, journalists, lawyers, and civil society leaders, who retain real-time knowledge of the very regions Canada is trying to navigate. These individuals are not simply newcomers to be integrated. They are embedded sources of geopolitical insight and transnational networks, a strategic resource hiding in plain sight.

The Displaced Vanguard

What distinguishes this group is not only their experience, but how they operate. Many have worked at the highest levels of government, civil society, and international institutions, and continue to maintain active professional and personal networks across borders. This allows them to interpret political developments, economic shifts, and emerging risks in ways that formal diplomatic channels often cannot.

Luis Horacio Nájera, a Mexican journalist who investigated organized crime and cartel violence along the U.S.–Mexico border, offers a clear example. From Canada, he has continued documenting cartel activity and impunity, including co-authoring The Wolfpack with Canadian journalist Peter Edwards. Yet despite this expertise, he has struggled to secure stable employment, even as his knowledge speaks directly to evolving transnational security challenges. His experience reflects a broader pattern: Canada hosts individuals with deep, real-time insight into global risks, but lacks the institutional pathways to recognize and integrate that expertise. In doing so, Canada is not just underutilizing talent; it is overlooking a domestic resource that could strengthen its foreign policy, economic strategy, and national security. The result is a structural disconnect: the knowledge Canada seeks internationally is already present domestically but remains institutionally inaccessible.

From Global Investment to Domestic Neglect

Sheng Xue, a Toronto-based writer and prominent Chinese human rights activist, sits squarely in this blind spot. Born and raised in China during a period of rapid economic transformation and increasing information control, she has a deep understanding of how the Chinese Communist Party’s censorship apparatus influences business operations and how political considerations shape market behavior. This knowledge of China’s political economy is precisely what Canada requires for assessing risks in Canada’s second-largest trading partner.

When world-class experts are reduced to generic “newcomers” or filtered through narrow institutional requirements, we aren’t just losing talent; we are choosing to be less informed. The rigid funding criteria and the lack of credential recognition systematically exclude the very experts who Canada needs to be fully informed and protect its sovereignty. Integrating them into policy processes would ensure that the global expertise Canada seeks abroad is utilized to build the domestic strength Carney envisions. Advancing pragmatic interests while staying faithful to core values requires institutional change.

When Foreign Threats Become Domestic Risks

Soe Wuttye Htoo, a former diplomat at the Myanmar Embassy in Ottawa who broke with the military regime following the 2021 coup, illustrates both the risk and the opportunity. While facing financial hardship and ongoing security concerns, she has continued to document human rights abuses and track geopolitical developments in Myanmar, including the role of external actors such as China. Her experience reflects a broader reality: Canada already hosts individuals with direct insight into complex geopolitical environments yet lacks the institutional mechanisms to protect and integrate them.

This oversight is not only inefficient, but it also creates vulnerabilities. The same communities Canada fails to recognize as strategic assets are often the first targets of transnational repression. Authoritarian regimes extend their reach into Canadian society through digital surveillance, intimidation, and family-based “proxy punishment.” What appears as a foreign policy challenge is, increasingly, a domestic reality.

Carney defines modern sovereignty as the ability to withstand external pressure. But that pressure is no longer confined to trade negotiations or diplomatic disputes. It is experienced in Canadian homes, where individuals with direct knowledge of foreign regimes face coercion and threats that blur the line between external and internal security.

Yet these communities are also among the first to detect emerging risks, from foreign interference to disinformation campaigns. Their proximity to these dynamics gives them a level of awareness that formal institutions often struggle to replicate. In overlooking them as a strategic resource, Canada is not only missing an opportunity, it is weakening its own capacity to anticipate and respond to threats.

Recognizing these individuals as strategic actors, rather than vulnerable outsiders, would allow Canada to strengthen both its domestic resilience and its broader national security posture. In a more contested global environment, safeguarding sovereignty increasingly depends on how effectively states can identify and mobilize the knowledge already within their borders.

Practitioners of Variable Geometry

Carney’s strategy of “variable geometry” depends on networks that extend beyond formal diplomacy. These experts are already the primary practitioners of this strategy, maintaining professional networks that high-level diplomacy struggles to replicate. This is the asset that will help Canada move beyond naive multilateralism to principled pragmatism. 

What this means in practice is taking steps towards targeted institutional change. To enable those experts to make a change in their home countries and in Canada, grant funding requirements should be expanded to allow them to compete. To benefit from their grounded knowledge, new policy consultation mechanisms should be created within the security and trade institutions. Facilitating a path toward a sustainable career for those experts in Canada is not simply a humanitarian act. It is a matter of national security. 

To be truly principled and pragmatic, Canada must close the gap between its international rhetoric and its domestic structural barriers. Canada prides itself on being pluralistic. It is, however, not enough to pride ourselves on our ability to tolerate differences. Pluralism is about valuing, embracing, and leveraging those differences for the benefit of this country. The expertise required to navigate this world of rupture is already here, waiting to be invited to the table. As Carney concluded at Davos, the power of the less powerful starts with honesty. It is time to be honest about the fact that Canada’s most strategic global resource is currently waiting for us to stop asking it to wait at the door.

© OpenCanada