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{"id":24593,"date":"2026-06-20T18:17:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T18:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/canadas-soft-power-flex\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T18:17:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T18:17:14","slug":"canadas-soft-power-flex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/canadas-soft-power-flex\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada&#8217;s soft-power flex"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>OTTAWA \u2014 Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney\u2019s rousing Davos speech, where he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/01\/20\/carney-trump-davos-great-powers-00736740\" target=\"_blank\">called on middle powers to not become losers to the world\u2019s \u201chegemons,\u201d<\/a> delivered a message that positioned Canada as an influential convening power.<\/p>\n<p>Now, with billions watching \u2014 including during this afternoon&#8217;s match between Germany and C\u00f4te d&#8217;Ivoire in Toronto \u2014 the World Cup is giving Canada an unprecedented opportunity to thirst-trap a global audience to take America\u2019s neighbor a little more seriously.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe international brand of Canada is important for our economy, for our place in the world, diplomatically, but also commercially,\u201d Canada\u2019s Secretary of State for Sport and Olympic gold medalist Adam van Koeverden told Blue Light News.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe just want to emphasize that Canada is open for business,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re taking advantage of the reality that all eyes will be on Canada for the next couple of weeks throughout the FIFA tournament \u2026 and we want to continue to reinforce relationships, make new friends [and] meet new corporate partners.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Canada needs foreign investors to get the Carney government\u2019s dreams of building oil pipelines, new rail and port expansions to unlock new wealth for a country that continues to be the target of tariffs and casual annexation threats from its closest ally. And a bellicose U.S. President Donald Trump has only helped Carney in his trips around the world to lure more foreign investment, selling Canada as a reliable destination to an unreliable United States.<\/p>\n<p>A goal for senior Canadian government officials is to use the World Cup to bait deep-pocketed viewers to attend the inaugural Canada Investment Summit that Carney is organizing in September. The idea is to attract \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pm.gc.ca\/en\/news\/news-releases\/2026\/04\/17\/prime-minister-carney-announces-first-ever-canada-investment-summit\" target=\"_blank\">the world\u2019s largest investors<\/a>\u201d to raise C$1 trillion over the next five years to charge the economy \u2014 Carney\u2019s message of adapting to the global \u201crupture\u201d by wresting economic control of the future put into practice.<\/p>\n<p>That could mean <a href=\"https:\/\/url4027.email.politico.com\/ss\/c\/u001.6g0Zd3AyneOViJYBXgbV61aBY1LrZvOmlYJaVCKXERWzrHtkb-u2Ychvg3IbujciuxWrgtCTPPd6HheSKecDupJJ-7D8EnzVp1cTZ_JKaYcDO-zpcyKgPG9gtU9l3n3Tm5tNUYyY7G_vMMdHYb7Shzv4rf5VuZQifL1ZwQY-hIfYhDI055C8D_Zv3dIJhNJmt5e0jwflrUYHtjSlqwmwYU1JaE0s1aqcjj1_b-rwRUI\/4rj\/XMoS3zCIStyehfdT6x4Xbw\/h4\/h001.-a0_28IQqDRBj3N2Ci7guYXhszq1SKol9b9Wc6tn2s8\" target=\"_blank\">more cash to expand sport infrastructure<\/a>, such as stadiums, to host more global sporting events. The Toronto Stadium is notably the World Cup\u2019s smallest among the 16 host cities with a 43,000-seat capacity. But organizers don\u2019t want people to fixate on that.<\/p>\n<p>Sharon Bollenbach, executive director of the FIFA World Cup 2026 Toronto Secretariat, told Forecast the city is leaning in hard on its \u201cworld in a city\u201d theme \u2014 a nod to a city widely recognized as the most multicultural in the world.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe speak 250 languages in our city,\u201d she said. \u201cOur cultural diversity is very extensive and vibrant \u2026 in all of our neighborhoods, in food, in the culture.\u201d Asked what\u2019s different about Toronto compared to Los Angeles, another city that could claim the same characteristics, Bollenbach suggested it\u2019s the general optimism in the air that sets the Canadian city apart. \u201cI think we just live that every day in such a positive and energetic way that that\u2019s something we really want to showcase,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s hope the waterfront images of Toronto\u2019s CN Tower and Vancouver\u2019s North Shore mountains in the backdrop of World Cup stadium shots will generate an eventual tourism boom that hasn\u2019t yet happened for the tournament itself.<\/p>\n<p>Sara Anghel, president and CEO of the Greater Toronto Hotel Association, said one factor in lower-than-expected demand is that half the game tickets sold in Toronto are \u201clocal-ish\u201d from the city area and province. The trend isn\u2019t unique to Toronto after FIFA <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/canada\/article-fifa-hotel-vancouver-toronto-world-cup\/\" target=\"_blank\">canceled blocks of thousands of hotel rooms in host cities<\/a> this spring in response to fizzled out expectations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJune is already a really, really busy month for Toronto, and so when we\u2019re bringing this World Cup that\u2019s never happened in our city ever, we\u2019ve displaced all of the meetings and conferences that would usually come into the city,\u201d Anghel said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019re staying away because of the FIFA games.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OTTAWA \u2014 Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney\u2019s rousing Davos speech, where he called on middle powers to not become losers to the world\u2019s \u201chegemons,\u201d delivered a message that positioned Canada as an influential convening power. Now, with billions watching \u2014 including during this afternoon&#8217;s match between Germany and C\u00f4te d&#8217;Ivoire in Toronto \u2014 the World [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24593\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}