However much the reader's curiosity is piqued or hackles raised by the recommendations in Open Canada: A Global Positioning Strategy for a Networked Age, the document is primarily an effort to reshape the guiding myth of Canada as an international actor. The new myth portrays a country that is an incubator of ideas, a magnet for talent, its infectious Olympic spirit brimming over, a country with a distinctive brand, a media savvy country, a country that makes effective use of resources that until recently it didn't even realize it had, a country for the digital age with no unused icons on its desktop.

In this, albeit hazy, vision where you are positioned matters as much as what you do. Connectedness is vitally important. Canadians should aim to occupy the "sweet spot at the centre of global networks." A lot of baggage must be shed. Not long ago a central objective of public policy was to maintain a measure of independence in case Canada might have to fend, or want to fend, for itself. Open Canada proclaims that it is time for Canadians to open markets, submerge their sensitivity about sovereignty and go confidently into the world. Independence is an illusion.

Will the vision propounded by Ed Greenspon and his team gain traction? The danger in their heady optimism lurks in the international environment, to which they give scant attention. Canada is going to have to navigate the perils of a forbidding world in which nuclear technologies are bought and sold, the threat of cyber attack puts vital infrastructure at risk, loud professions of faith in open markets mask new and ingenious trade barriers, ethnic hatreds are stirred up, the rights of women and children are trampled and both man-made and natural environmental disasters occur regularly.

This may also be a world in which the power of the United States is declining. Though Canada and the U.S. are sometimes at odds, it has often taken U.S. leadership to focus Canadian policy. We have sought to be "in good company" without necessarily debating or analyzing the full spectrum of policy choices. At the same time, we have counted on influence in Washington to give us a measure of influence abroad. No longer able to define our stance in relation to the superpower, we are now going to have to rework a lot of the calculations that have undergirded policy and, indeed, have formed part of our foreign policy culture.

Moreover, China (or India) rising cannot be used to balance America declining. An intricate web of capillaries unites Canadian and American societies and economies, numerous instruments and institutions, formal and informal, enable joint management of the continent, and the degree of mutual understanding that results is unique among governments. Can anyone seriously believe that strengthening trade and investment ties with emerging powers will fill the gap left by our close association with the superpower, that we will achieve the kind of communication with them that we have experienced with a neighbour sharing many of our values, one of our major languages and significant parts of our history? In a world bereft of American pre-eminence we could be adrift, thrown back on our own resources, strongly tempted to take the same protective measures and cultivate the same hankering for independence that Greenspon & Co. decry.

Even if it proves not to be on the skids after all, the superpower itself is changing, Turning Canada into America's indispensable ally, which the report advocates, may soon be a lot more difficult than the authors envisage. As the current census will undoubtedly indicate, the Hispanic population of the U.S. is growing by leaps and bounds. The increasing political weight and sophistication of this population is bound to be reflected in the make-up of future U.S. Congresses. Try as we might to be indispensable we may find that a large and influential Hispanic voting bloc stands in the way of the pursuit of Canadian interests in the American political system.

Aspects of the international environment are particularly ominous because the most important ingredient of a governing myth is the conviction of success. It is that all-important conviction that has mobilized elites and buoyed international initiatives with popular support, and also held up a standard by which the performance of governments could be assessed. The experience of failure, the frustration that comes from seeing long held objectives further and further from realization, could lead to disillusionment, the crumbling of the myth and flaccid policies.

Open Canada sets out a vision of Canada as "the most global and networked country anywhere", but, despite the subtitle, this is not a strategy. A strategy would set priorities among national objectives and stipulate how we are going to achieve at least the important ones, carefully husbanding the resources we have. An attractive vision is not to be underrated but must be combined with good strategy to make Canada an effective international actor in the modern era.

Gerald Wright is Co-Chair of the CIC Ottawa Foreign Policy Initiative, and teaches U.S. foreign Policy at Carleton's Norman Paterson School of International Affairs.