June 7, 2026
HELSINKI — After I arrived at my resort in Tampere final week, there have been dozens of individuals gathered outdoors watching one thing collectively. As I approached, the character of the campfire turned clear. It was the ultimate sport of the World Hockey Championship, through which Finland was beating Switzerland.
Simply the day gone by, Finland had eradicated Canada however nobody in Finland teased me about it. As a lot as Finns and Canadians take our hockey significantly, our new, next-level bilateral relationship is Cheap Bedfellows, not Heated Rivalry.
On June third, Finnish President Alexander Stubb talked about Canada in a speech about his vision for a possible enlargement of the European Union to 40 nations: “Wouldn’t it’s pretty if Canada was the twenty eighth state of the European Union reasonably than the 51st state of the US?”
No matter whether or not one thinks Canada should join the EU, this assertion factors to President Stubb’s constructive notion of our nation and its political management, an affinity that was on full show in mid-April when he visited Ottawa.
Stubb’s variable-geometry bromance with Prime Minister Mark Carney unfurled like a rom-com montage, with the 2 of them performing hockey drills with the Ottawa Charge of the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL).
As Politico put it of their protection of the go to, Carney and Stubb are “Two centrist dads trying to save the world.”
But, the shut relationship between the 2 world leaders extends far past picture ops and hockey — the nationwide sport of each Canada and Finland.
As Politico additionally put it: “Donald Trump’s detonation of the rules-based order in 2026 has lashed them collectively because the mental leaders of a brand new counter-movement providing a approach for centrist liberals to outlive the storm.”
Making an attempt to reshape geopolitics and transatlantic relations, these two leaders quote and textual content one another commonly, and so they share a give attention to what Stubb calls “values-based realism,” a time period that Carney explicitly borrowed from him in his viral Davos speech again in January.
They’ve each revealed prescriptive coverage bestsellers — Carney’s Value(s): Building a Better World for All landed in 2021, Stubb’s The Triangle of Power: Rebalancing the New World Order appeared earlier this yr.
Not solely do the 2 leaders have loads in widespread, so do their nations. Past their shared ardour for hockey, Canada and Finland are two Arctic powers and liberal democracies that share comparable northern landscapes and harsh winters.
From a geopolitical standpoint, these two nations additionally share one thing else: they every share a protracted border with a nuclear-armed “nice energy” at a time when that label is evolving amid a disrupted world order that has firmly outlined each the US and Russia as threats to sovereignty and democracy.
The post-democracy agendas of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump have made Canada and Finland companions in geopolitical sanity.
Their geography creates, for each Canada and Finland, shared vulnerabilities of the “David-and-Goliath” selection, with Finland extra accustomed, traditionally, to a doubtlessly belligerent Russia than Canada is to a hostile America, however with each sharing a necessity for like-minded allies. Each sleep with elephants that might cost at any second — which creates a strategic overlap of shared intelligence.
The post-democracy agendas of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump have made Canada and Finland companions in geopolitical sanity.
In Finland’s case, essentially the most momentous shock from its neighbour got here in February 2022 with Putin’s unlawful invasion of Ukraine. Whereas Canada doesn’t have a land border with Russia, we’ve got to deal immediately with that nation within the Arctic and we additionally strongly assist Ukraine in its heroic warfare in opposition to Putin’s expansionism.
Dominated by the Kingdom of Sweden from the center of the twelfth century, Finland turned an autonomous duchy inside the Russian Empire in 1809 and declared its independence in 1917, within the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. After a bloody civil warfare fought by Finnish and Russian troops, Finland turned a Republic in 1919 and a member of the League of Nations the next yr.
In 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Finland, which misplaced greater than 10% of its territory in what is called the Talvisota, or Winter War. A second Soviet invasion — the Continuation War — happened in 1944, after which Finland misplaced much more land whereas having to pay warfare reparations to the Soviet Union.
Throughout the Chilly Warfare, out of a drive for self-preservation and thru a course of generally known as Finlandization, the nation maintained a impartial stance, remained out of NATO, and developed robust commerce ties with the Soviet Union. Concerned within the European Financial Neighborhood beginning in 1973, Finland turned a member of the EU in 1995, and it adopted the euro 4 years later.
Regardless of the top of the Chilly Warfare and the method of European integration, Finland remained impartial geopolitically till the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, which dramatically increased public support for NATO membership — from 28% in January of that yr to 62% in March to 76% in Could.
This supplied the political licence for Finnish political leaders together with then-President Sauli Niinistö to finish the lengthy coverage of neutrality and be part of NATO on April 4 2023, a improvement unimaginable just some years earlier.
Since 2022, Finland has progressively elevated its defence spending whereas sustaining conscription, which is enshrined in the country’s Constitution.
In Finland, I’ve seen many younger conscripts travelling by prepare throughout the nation, a major presence of the army in on a regular basis life and a mirrored image of the obligatory army service different European nations like Belgium, France, Germany and Italy deserted over the twenty years that adopted the top of the Chilly Warfare.
Finland’s post-2022 transformation in international coverage and geopolitical posture is an object lesson for a Canada dramatically affected by the return of Donald Trump to the White Home, with the arbitrary tariff wars, threats to sovereignty, and financial trolling which have include it.
Though Canada is a a lot bigger and extra decentralized nation than Finland, it’s an instance of nationwide management by way of consensus-building within the face of adversity that incorporates helpful takeaways pertinent to Canada’s personal relationship with a fast-evolving neighbour.
At a second when Canada and Finland share the destiny of being compelled to react swiftly to threatening political selections made by highly effective neighbours, the Carney-Stubb relationship issues disproportionately.
Past hockey and aphorisms, it may show to be simply as vital as different transatlantic friendships have been to earlier coalitions in opposition to unhinged tyranny.
A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Daniel Béland is professor of political science and director of the McGill Institute for the Research of Canada at McGill College.
