The International Association of Political Consultants is set to give its 2026 Democracy Medal to Prime Minister Mark Carney, Global News has learned.
Carney, travelling in Asia for the next several days, was unable to accept the award in person, which was to be announced Saturday evening at the International Association of Political Consultants’ (IAPC) annual conference in Seville, Spain.
Previous winners of the IAPC’s Democracy Medal include Russian democracy activist Alexei Navalny, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and South Africa’s Nelson Mandela.
The IAPC was established in 1968 and it first presented a Democracy Medal in 1982 to Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa. The IAPC has about 180 members worldwide who work as political consultants, strategists and pollsters.
“The IAPC Democracy Medal 2026 goes to Prime Minister Mark Carney because, at a time when the political landscape is shifting faster than at any point in a generation, he offered the world something rare: clarity,” IAPC President Marko Rakar said in a draft statement reviewed by Global News.
“He did not raise his voice; he raised the standard. With calm and clear thinking, he showed that middle powers are not powerless, and that working together they can defend the rule of law, honour the obligations nations owe one another, and help keep the international order and the peace it protects.”
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Carney’s hallmark foreign policy speech so far in his 18-month tenure as prime minister was given at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 20. In the speech, Carney argued that middle powers, like Canada, should reject the power of ‘hegemons’ and build coalitions with like-minded partners.
Carney did not mention either the United States or China by name as the ‘hegemons’ that had caused a “rupture” in the international order.
But he issued a call to action at Davos to middle powers in Europe and Asia: “In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice: to compete with each other for favour or to combine to create a third path with impact,” Carney said. “We should not allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity, and rules will remain strong — if we choose to wield it together.”
Carney has built on some of the themes of his Davos speech in subsequent speeches in international fora, including, for example, at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France earlier this fall.
“Our members nominated him and our membership chose him, because democracy needs leaders who tell the truth about the world as it is and still work for the world as it should be,” the IAPC’s Rakar said in the draft release.
Carney, who started the day Sunday at the ASEAN Summit in Manila, The Philippines and will end the day at the Francophonie Summit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, did not immediately respond to comment about the IAPC’s award.
After Cambodia, Carney travels to Shenzhen, China, for the annual summit of Pacific nation leaders known as APEC to be hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping. U.S. President Donald Trump is also expected to attend. Carney says he expects to have a one-on-one meeting with Xi but it is unclear if he will meet separately with Trump.
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