Canada’s politeness problem: How to stop playing nice and assert itself more - National Post

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivers a speech in the hemicycle of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France. Photo by JEAN-CHRISTOPHE VERHAEGEN /AFP via Getty ImagesArticle contentWASHINGTON, D.C. — Around the world, Canadians are often described as “nice” or “polite.”

Canada’s international reputation for kindness resonates domestically, too. A Pew Research Center survey this year found that Canadians held among the world’s most positive views of their fellow citizens’ morality, with 92 per cent of respondents saying their fellow Canadians were morally good. But could all that politeness be hurting Canada?

Kumaran Nadesan, the cofounder of 369 Global, a Canadian conglomerate specializing in skills training, media and global market facilitation, says yes. In his 2026 book, The Impolite Canadian: Why Playing Nice Is Costing Us the Future, Nadesan argues that Canada’s greatest weakness is its inclination to be too polite.

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National Post reached out to Nadesan to discuss how Canada’s cultural commitment to politeness has become a passive liability that is holding the country back. The good news? He says some less polite Canadian moves in recent months have given him reason to hope.

This Q&A has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Kumaran Nadesan: We don’t always ask the hard questions or push back when we need to, which means we let others dictate our reality for us rather than being active agents.

I think it also produces a sense of inconsistency. For example, if you look at the new “associate membership” with the EU, this is a tremendous announcement and a much-needed re-establishing of Canada’s identity and presence in the world. But we have a history of pushing through for the signing ceremonies and then moving slowly in the execution of things. This can turn into inaction in the mid- to long-term. 

We have a lot of great bilateral trade agreements, but I think we do not really measure the outputs of that in tangible terms. We are not consistently looking at how we continue to aggressively execute these MOUs and trade agreements.