Finland's president says Canada is on a pragmatic path amid geopolitical tumult

“It’s a very difficult time right now,” Stubb said Wednesday during a discussion held by Carleton University in Ottawa.

“Canada is doing all the right things, to a certain extent hedging and creating relationships with India, with China, with the European Union … but at the same time, maintaining a relationship with the United States.”

Stubb was on a two-day visit to Ottawa to build on deeper economic and security ties Canada is forging with Helsinki under Prime Minister Mark Carney. He told reporters Tuesday that the two exchange text messages almost daily.

Carney has been touting “principled pragmatism” as his approach to defending human rights and international law while expanding trade and investment — an approach that includes courting financing from autocracies and avoiding direct criticism of Washington and Beijing.

Stubb has taken a similar approach, which he describes as “values-based realism.” Carney cited Stubb in his January speech at the World Economic Forum that caught global attention.

“Mark talks about there being a rupture in the world order. I talk about there being transition. And we’re trying, the two of us, to merge these two ideas now,” Stubb said.

Finland joined the NATO military alliance in 2023 in response to rising alarm about the threat posed by its neighbour Russia following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Stubb has delivered some of the most forceful rhetoric of any European leader about the threat Russia poses to peace on the continent. He brought that perspective to the Carleton University campus, saying Russia’s war has cost it influence in places such as Syria, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela.

“When you’re a great power in decline, you have to try to salvage what is left, and usually that is ending up in war,” he said.

Stubb said some cold calculations reveal Russia’s high death count as it has struggled to gain Ukrainian territory.

“Russia is now advancing at 157 dead to a square-kilometre. It would take between one to two years to acquire Donetsk, at a cost of roughly 800,000 dead,” he said, referring to Ukraine’s eastern industrial region.

Stubb added that while he had been optimistic about efforts months back to forge a ceasefire and peace deal with Moscow, he has seen more recently what he calls “classical Russian delay tactics.”

He said Ukraine’s allies should now “unfortunately start preparing for the next winter” in the ongoing war.

The Finnish president also said that smaller countries like Canada and Finland can contain global hegemons by offering ideas on how to build a safer, more prosperous world.

“If the order is changing, try to take the agenda and suggest, OK, what is it going to be,” he said. “We have a lot of agency, as long as we take it. We just have to take the space of power that’s given to us as small states.”

Stubb said both countries are trying to take a pragmatic approach to diplomacy by advancing their values where possible in a more dangerous, divided world.

He said Canada is taking the right approach by trying to preserve multilateralism through working more with developing countries.

That could involve reforming the United Nations and the global financial lending system to better reflect issues in the Global South, so that these agencies can also effectively respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“In order for us to preserve the system, they need to have power in it, and that’s what we’re trying to work with,” he said.

Stubb added that Canada joining the European Union — an idea that has not been seriously proposed by any Canadian or European senior leaders — “would be a marriage made in heaven” and would involve “negotiations that would be faster than Finland joining NATO.”

Later Wednesday, at another panel on the outskirts of Ottawa, Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said the relationship between Canada and Finland has strengthened in recent years. She noted Canada was the first to “push for Finland” to join NATO.

“We were always good friends, but now we’re actually dating,” she joked before a crowd of business-types at the local Nokia branch.

Stubb offered a different analogy.

“You’re more like big sister, and we’re more like little sister in the system,” he said.

Joly added that there is more work to do to boost commercial ties.

“We’re not yet in the golden age of the Canada-Finland relationship because there are a lot of things to do that are not only state-to-state but that are business-to-business,” she said.

Joly suggested the two countries should look to extend their co-operation on producing Arctic icebreakers to other types of vessels, and should forge similar partnerships on satellites and quantum technology.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 15, 2026.

— With files from Kyle Duggan.