Variable Geometry: Canada and European Security and Defence cooperation

By Barbara J. Falk

In light of the current ruptured world order and Canada’s requirement to engage in what Prime Minister Mark Carney has called “variable geometry,” this short think piece will focus on policy areas/lessons learned on which Canada can concretely focus and, at the same time, strengthen and learn from our relationships with our European NATO allies. First, Canada should develop and participate in opportunities to lead within NATO on Arctic issues. Second, Canada should look to European examples as we think about national mobilization and national service. Third, we can work with and learn from European allies in the areas of whole of society resilience, operationalizing practical forms of deterrence, and the development of national stockpiles—separate and apart from Canada’s participation in European procurement processes via the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) agreement.^[1]  On the “home front,” Canada should  focus the national conversation on sovereignty rather than “guns versus butter.” Finally, through the elimination of interprovincial trade barriers, Canada can work more effectively with the EU as a more unified economic actor on the global stage. While Canada can strengthen our defence and security cooperation with the European Union (EU), however, that does not translate into becoming the 28^th member state of the EU.

First, Canada has opportunities to lead within NATO on Arctic issues; indeed, Brussels is looking for us to do just that. In the process, we can push the alliance to think of Arctic security in the broadest sense geographically and conceptually. Practically, we could increase our participation in European Arctic exercises and learn from their experiences. We need to build pragmatic cooperation—where I work, that means also having students on the Joint Command and Staff Programme and the National Security Programme from the Nordic states.^[2]

Second, Canada can look to Europe as we think about some form of national mobilization—and for Europeans conscription is only one form, and not the only or most critical form. European publics and civil society, thanks to events such as a foiled assassination attempt in Germany, infrastructure disruptions such as the drones over Copenhagen’s airports, and even shopping mall arsonists in Poland who turn out to be Russian disposable single-use agents, are ever more aware of the current threat landscape. Yet this consensus is under threat from the populist right and mis/disinformation. 

Third, whole of society resilience, mobilization, and stockpiles are areas in which Canada can and should learn. For example, Finland has a reservist force of 900,000 with an active-duty professional force of about 24,000. By 2031 Finland’s reserve capacity will grow to over one million, meaning that one out every five Finns is in the reserves, on a population base of 5.6 million. Dual use infrastructure means four out of five Finns can go underground in case of emergency. Finland has a unified supply agency, National Emergency Supply Agency, or NESA, ready to respond to domestic or international crisis. And Finland involves every kind of leader in security discussions and courses—which are competitive and much sought after—including cultural and media figures.^[3] Yes, Canada is bigger geographically, lives in a different neighbourhood with a population that has historically thought in fireproof house terms, along with a more complicated federal-provincial-territorial governance landscape. All of that is challenging, but not an excuse, in learning from other jurisdictions.

Fourth, we need to be careful in this current moment of increased spending as well as media and public attention to avoid a “guns versus butter” debate. This is a false binary, and we should do everything within our power to avoid it. Better to cast the conversation and the narrative as the price of sovereignty. We should not waste the current attention of Canadians on national security, especially given the unifying impact of sustained American pressure.  

Fifth, we need to strengthen Canada domestically on the economic front which will, in turn, strengthen our security position. Most critical is the need to negotiate the removal of interprovincial trade barriers. The European Union is a far more unified and effective economic actor on the global stage than Canada, and while this has to do with population difference, unity, scope and direction depends powerfully on the common market.

Canada also needs not to overreach. An important air power lesson is that bombing, even with precision guided munitions and superior strength, does not regime change deliver, nor if successfully, the type necessarily desired. For if a regime is toppled, as was the case in Libya in 2011, then we must always be mindful of the cautionary tale that the situation could always be much worse than the status quo ante. The use of force always has unintended consequences. Europeans are feeling this acutely. They have already been dealing with a transactional American administration and are feeling the cost of a shifting security burden in face of the Russian threat and the global economic instability wrought by the war with Iran. American relaxation of sanctions on Russian exports means that Russia now gets more money to wage a war in Ukraine that Europeans are increasingly having to pay for. And this heightens European hypocrisy too—many are still importing or dependent upon Russian energy, thus increasing the price of the conflict by their own actions already.^[4]  Instability and disorder can always generate not simply worst-case scenarios but have dramatic and longstanding effects on human and state insecurity. NATO and Canada need to stay the course in staying out of the Middle East. In the CAF and DND, we are already feeling the pain of political exigencies: expectations are rising in a political administration that does not value delay. Yet we cannot do everything, everywhere, all at once.

In September, EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen offered the possibility of EU “associate membership” for Canada—a deliberately conceptually fuzzy status Keep in mind this has long been a topic of punditry—well before even Donald J Trump’s first presidential administration. In 2006 Timothy Garton Ash floated the idea in The Guardian, half in jest, that Canada shared the same values, met the Copenhagen criteria, and brought the net benefit of more than a half a century of practice of deep multicultural integration and effective bilingualism. Easier to integrate, Garton Ash opined, than either Turkey (whose membership was then a hot topic of debate) or Ukraine (well before the Euromaidan and Russia’s 2022 invasion).^[5]

What could such associate membership include? A few easy “wins” to bring the Canadian public onside could be participation in Erasmus+, access to EU research and innovation funding, increased travel and work mobility. A few signature projects of deep cooperation and exchange in areas such as AI, digital sovereignty, and critical minerals could play to European regulatory heft and Canadian natural resources. Canada is weakest where the EU is strongest: as a common market. Conversely, Canada is strongest where the EU is weakest: a fully functional (if underfunded) national set of security institutions: the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) and the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS). Canada should welcome an enriched relationship by whatever name it is called, but such cooperation also assumes greater interprovincial economic strengthening. And a new set of economic risks to Canada would be forthcoming: a level of economic regulation that would probably be challenged by Canada’s more independent provinces at the Supreme Court as contrary to the division of powers in the Constitution Act. Canadians should not assume that greater cooperation with the EU on the defence and security front translates into immediate advantage or security. Europe is currently a continent at war—if only construed in a hybrid sense and leaving out Ukraine, an ostrich-like position to assume.

In his Davos speech, Prime Minister Carney emphasized how Canada, like-minded allies, and middle powers, need to be selective and prioritize our engagement to support Canada and ally with others when mutually beneficial opportunities arise. Variable geometry, according to Carney, involves different pathways and coalitions for different tasks and issues. For many opportunities and challenges, Canada should both deepen and widen our relationships with our European allies, to borrow EU parlance. As with much Canadian and EU governance writ large, future cooperation will necessarily be piecemeal, subject to political contestation, charges of inevitable democratic deficits, legal challenges, and with benefits that can only be measured over decades and not in the immediate horizon of great power belligerence.

Bio: Barbara J. Falk is Professor, Defence Studies at the Royal Military College of Canada, Director of Academics at the Canadian Forces College and Senior Associate of the Centre for European and Eurasian Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.

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^[1] The objective of this Agreement is to lay down the conditions for the participation of Canadian legal entities and products originating in Canada in procurements supported by European Council Regulation (EU) 2025/1106 establishing the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) through the Reinforcement of the European Defence Industry Instrument (the "SAFE Instrument" or "Regulation (EU) 2025/1106") in accordance with its Article 17.

^[2] For the last two years, we have had Danish officers but have yet to have any Swedish or Finnish officers on our programmes. Poland, Ukraine, and the Baltic states usually send officers to our programmes.

^[3] By contrast, the Canadian Forces College suspended its two-week Canadian Security Studies Programme (the only concentrated security education programme that pulls together not only security practitioners from across the Government of Canada but also from other levels of government as well). Until this past year’s successful introduction and rebranding as the National Security Studies Seminar in blended learning format, the programme had been dormant for five years.

^[4] Belgium, France, Greece, Hungary, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain import Russian liquified natural gas (LNG); Hungary and Slovakia continue to import Russian oil through EU exclusion agreements. Russian LNG must be phased out by 31 December 2026 and pipeline gas must be phased out by 30 September 2027. See https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_2860; accessed 01 September 2026.

^[5] Timothy Garton Ash, “I’ve found the perfect new member of the EU. If only it were in Europe,” The Guardian,https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jun/29/comment.eu, accessed 31 August 2026.