Amid a tariff war with the U.S., Canada is showing what diversification of alliances really means. It already has a trade agreement with the EU, though not all 27 governments have ratified it yet. But this year alone Carney reached a major trade agreement with China and a clutch of new overarching deals with India, including a 10-year accord on nuclear energy.
The Finnish president is bringing a delegation of more than 30 businesses to Canada this week: Companies from defense, maritime and mining industries will be making connections in Ottawa as the two leaders renew their discussions.
Endurance tests
There are clearly limits, of course. Canada and Finland are medium and small countries, not superpowers, either economically or militarily. Their common values are clear, but the “realism” of their size is equally obvious.
To those who struggle to see much hope amid the global upheavals, Stubb suggests staying calm and behaving like a Finn: “Take an ice bath, visit a sauna, and reflect,” as he put it in the introduction to his book. He is an endurance athlete, and often propounds Finland’s concept of resilience, or grit, using a word with no direct English translation: “Sisu.”
In the face of Trump’s threats, Carney this month described how millions of small individual acts of solidarity — such as buying Canadian wine instead of imported bottles from California, or taking vacations in Canada rather than Florida — are renewing his country’s strength. “Together they make a statement,” Carney said. “We are the masters of our destiny.”
If destiny is also geography, the deepening friendship between Carney and Stubb may owe something to a sense of place. The towns of their birth, Fort Smith and Helsinki, lie on exactly the same latitude: 60 degrees North.
Inhabitants of both must endure months of unforgiving cold, with winter temperatures falling below -20 degrees Celsius. And there is surely no more Finnish sentiment to be found anywhere in North America than the one-word motto of Carney’s home town: “Perseverence.”
Source:
www.politico.eu
