Prime Minister Mark Carney’s decision to release Canada’s new National Security Strategy (NSS) on the eve of the Canada–EU summit in Montreal was well-timed.

The two events, separated by just one day, offered the clearest indication yet of how Carney’s government intends to translate its pursuit of strategic autonomy into transformative economic, technological and security partnerships.

The strategy set out the context case for strengthening Canada’s sovereignty and building the strategic capabilities needed to protect it, while the Montreal summit demonstrated how deeper partnerships — as pre-framed for an evolving geoeconomic order in Carney’s Davos speech — can help turn those ambitions into reality.

Europe is a natural place to begin, given the considerable convergence between Canadian and European interests and the strength of the two parties’ existing economic and security ties.

But Canada’s emerging strategic bet on Europe must be part of a wider effort to build resilience with trusted partners, including across the Indo-Pacific.

An interesting coincidence last week illustrated why. As Canada unveiled its NSS and deepened its partnership with Europe, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz travelled to Singapore, Japan and South Korea to make the case for closer ties between Europe and the Indo-Pacific.

At a time when economic coercion, industrial overcapacity and weaponized supply chains are reshaping the global economy, Canada cannot afford to treat its European and Asian partnerships as separate foreign policy priorities.

At the heart of the new NSS is a recognition that sovereignty can no longer be primarily defined by geography, international rules, or the amenability of the United States.

Instead, it must be supported by domestic economic strength — per the inextricability of economic security and national security — strategic capabilities in critical sectors and a much wider network of reliable partnerships. The objective is not self-sufficiency, but greater resilience and freedom of action, achieved by strengthening Canada’s domestic capabilities while working with trusted partners whose strengths complement our own.

Europe features prominently in this thinking. The NSS explicitly identifies European partners as essential to developing strategic capabilities and strengthening collective resilience. That convergence was evident at the Montreal summit, where Canada and the EU launched their Alliance for the Future, with the ambition of creating a common space for prosperity and economic security.

Commitments on critical minerals investment, defence industrial cooperation, emerging technologies and digital trade signal a shift in the relationship beyond traditional trade diversification toward a deeper partnership focused on strengthening industrial competitiveness, reducing strategic dependencies and building more resilient supply chains.

The urgency of this shift has been driven in Canada largely by the growing uncertainty in its relationship with the United States. Much of our foreign policy debate over the past eighteen months has understandably focused on the vulnerabilities created by our overwhelming economic dependence on an increasingly unpredictable ally.

But Canada’s economic security agenda must extend well beyond reducing dependence on the U.S.. Canada and Europe must also contend with China’s industrial overcapacity, state-directed economic practices, dominance of critical supply chains, and growing willingness to use economic dependencies as instruments of leverage.

The Montreal Canada-EU joint statement includes commitments to coordinate economic security measures, address risks of circumvention and technology leakage, and strengthen the resilience of critical supply chains.

These are encouraging steps but translating them into meaningful results will require much closer coordination on investment screening, export controls, research security, trade enforcement and responses to economic coercion. Both sides will also need to align industrial investments, financing, and long-term purchasing commitments to make alternative supply chains commercially viable.

Importantly, this agenda cannot be confined to the transatlantic relationship. Speaking in Singapore on October 27, Merz argued that European and Asian countries face increasingly similar challenges in protecting their sovereignty, competitiveness and economic security. He called for stronger cooperation on trade, technology and security, including closer links between the EU and members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

There is an important lesson here for Ottawa.

Japan, South Korea, Australia and Taiwan are essential partners in many of the sectors identified in Canada’s NSS. Japan brings advanced manufacturing capabilities, capital and expertise in critical minerals supply chains, while South Korea is a major player in batteries, semiconductors and defence production. Australia is a close security partner and an important source of investment, while Taiwan occupies a central position in advanced semiconductor manufacturing.

India and selected Southeast Asian partners offer additional opportunities to diversify markets, production networks and technological partnerships.

As Mark Carney has indicated through his Indo-Pacific diplomatic push in the past year, these relationships cannot be treated as secondary to Canada’s growing strategic alignment with Europe. They are equally important to building the capabilities and resilience that Canada needs, particularly given the central role Asian economies play in global manufacturing, technology and critical supply chains. Indeed, the very nature of these supply chains means that effective diversification will often require cooperation across several regions rather than deeper dependence on any single partner.

Canada is well-positioned to help connect these networks. Through CETA and the CPTPP, it already has trade frameworks spanning Europe and the Indo-Pacific, while its growing network of bilateral strategic partnerships provides additional opportunities for cooperation. The Montreal joint statement recognizes this potential. The opportunity now is to translate these connections into practical arrangements that bring together the complementary strengths of partners across both regions.

In critical minerals, for example, Canada could work with European, Japanese and Korean partners on coordinated investment and purchasing arrangements that combine Canadian resources, European financing and industrial demand, and Asian technology and manufacturing expertise.

Such cooperation could help establish processing and refining capacity in Canada while creating more resilient supply chains across several trusted markets. Similar opportunities exist in semiconductors, batteries, advanced computing and defence technologies, alongside closer coordination of the economic security instruments needed to protect these investments.

This is where the NSS leaves an important gap. It calls for Canada’s regional strategies, including its Indo-Pacific Strategy, to be aligned within a single, interest-based foreign policy framework. Yet its treatment of Europe and the Indo-Pacific remains notably different.

Europe is explicitly identified as a partner in developing strategic capabilities and strengthening collective resilience, while the Indo-Pacific is framed more broadly around regional stability, trade diversification and fair economic cooperation. The strategy does not explain how partnerships across these regions will reinforce one another.

The forthcoming foreign policy strategy offers an opportunity to address this gap. Rather than treating Europe and the Indo-Pacific as separate geographic portfolios, it should identify where Canadian interests and partner capabilities intersect, establish priorities for cross-regional cooperation and explain how these partnerships can collectively strengthen Canada’s economic security.

Carney’s strategic autonomy agenda rests on an important recognition that Canada must become stronger at home and more connected abroad to preserve its freedom of action. The National Security Strategy provides a framework for that ambition, and the Canada–EU summit demonstrates how deeper partnerships can help advance it.

But a genuinely integrated approach to Canadian foreign policy must recognize that our economic security and strategic resilience depend as much on our partnerships across the Pacific as on those across the Atlantic.