I have spent most of my professional life between Washington and Silicon Valley. On paper, they are very different places. One is populated by policymakers, diplomats and trade negotiators. The other by founders, engineers and investors. Yet both share an unusual characteristic: They have an extraordinary ability to shape the future. Today, Washington and Silicon Valley are closer than they ever have been.
The lesson I took from both places is that influence rarely begins with facts. It begins with ideas. The most powerful people and institutions believe they can create their own reality, their own future. Facts are footnotes to them. In a sense, the future creates the facts, not the other way around.
That observation feels increasingly relevant as Canada prepares for another round of negotiations on the Canada-United-States-Mexico Agreement ( CUSMA ). Much of the debate will focus on trade balances, tariff schedules, market access provisions and existing economic relationships. Those details matter, but they are not where influence originates. Too often, Canada starts with today’s realities and attempts to derive a vision from them. The more successful approach is the reverse: begin with a vision of a future so valuable that others want to help build it, establish yourself as one of its authors and then make yourself indispensable to its execution.
Canadians have a long history of doing this. Canada’s founding entrepreneur, Pierre-Esprit Radisson, in many ways pioneered it. He did not persuade the English Crown to support what would become the Hudson’s Bay Company by presenting an analysis of the fur trade. He offered something far more valuable: a vision of a new route, a new geography and a new commercial future. The facts supported the proposal, but the idea created the opportunity. What he created was the continent’s first multinational corporation.
But winning the idea is only the first phase. The purpose of a negotiation is not to secure a perfect agreement; it is to create enough time and space to become stronger before the next one. Too often, countries treat agreements as destinations when they are really staging grounds. The most successful nations understand that every negotiation is part of a longer cycle in which periods of stability are used to build capabilities, attract investment, develop industries and accumulate leverage.
That is where execution matters. Once a strategic vision has been established, it must be translated into thousands of practical actions: companies investing, universities training talent, governments building infrastructure, entrepreneurs creating new ventures and capital flowing into sectors that matter. Over time, what begins as an idea becomes an ecosystem, and ecosystems create leverage.
This is why Canada’s choice when it comes to the U.S. is not really between dependence and separation. Dependence is increasingly uncomfortable, while separation is unrealistic and would come at enormous cost. The more promising path is deeper integration combined with greater leverage: integrating where Canada can create unique value while simultaneously building capabilities that make us increasingly indispensable over time.
Critical minerals , energy, artificial intelligence , Arctic infrastructure, defence technology, advanced manufacturing and space systems are not simply economic opportunities. They are opportunities to help define North America’s future. And the strongest negotiating position is not one in which your partner is forced to work with you, but one in which they cannot realistically achieve their ambitions without you.
If Canada spends the next decade building capabilities that matter, investing in entrepreneurs solving problems that matter and creating industries of the future, the balance of power at the next negotiating table will look different than it does today. Perhaps only slightly. But history is often shaped by slight shifts accumulated over long periods of time.
The countries that rise are not the ones that win every negotiation. They are the ones that use each negotiation to become stronger before the next.
Eliot Pence is a member of the Advisory Council for Canada-U.S. Economic Relations and the founder and chief executive of Dominion Dynamics Inc.