Canada in an Indo-Pacific World : Strategic Implications of a Shifting Economic Geographic and Technological Context

Global trade is being reshaped by major secular trends, geopolitical tensions, and major trade and investment policy departures that are raising the importance of the pre-modern trade routes that linked the Afro-Eurasian world island through the Indo-Pacific while reducing the relative importance of the North Atlantic trade system. While this upends the traditional perspective of Canada being close to the centre of gravity of global trade, the concurrent digital transformation is shifting progressively more commercial activity into the digital and digitally-enabled modes where distance is not so much an issue, but technology capabilities and the geopolitics of the data-driven economy are. This note comments on the strategic implications for Canada of these parallel trends. Canada must re-visualize its place in the world, move towards the emerging centre of economic gravity, and be prepared to step up to invest in its digital future