Colin Robertson

As a Canadian diplomat, Colin Robertson was part of the negotiating team behind the Canada–US Free Trade Agreement and NAFTA, before serving as Minister at the Canadian Embassy in Washington and Consul General in Los Angeles.

Today, he brings that first-hand understanding to a very different North American landscape, where tariffs, strategic competition and shifting US priorities are testing the assumptions behind decades of continental integration.

Robertson joined Canada’s foreign service in 1977. Over the next three decades, his postings and assignments took him through the US, Hong Kong and New York, as well as Canada’s missions to the United Nations. In Ottawa, he worked across foreign affairs, trade, policy planning and public diplomacy, including in the offices of the Foreign Affairs Minister and Deputy Minister of International Trade.

Free-trade agreements, in his view, are never simply commercial documents. They depend on political relationships, public support and the ability to navigate competing national interests. He captured that experience in Decision at Midnight: The Inside Story of the Canada–US Free Trade Negotiations, which he co-authored in 1996.

Today, Colin Robertson is Vice President and Fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, where he hosts the Global Exchange podcast and contributes regularly to debates on foreign policy, trade and defence. He is also an Executive Fellow at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs.

His 2026 Diplomats Guide to Canada examines the country’s economic, political and strategic position, while his analysis of CUSMA considers what Canada needs from its most important trading relationship as Washington becomes more transactional.

Robertson was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2026 for his contributions to Canadian foreign, trade and defence policy and public diplomacy. The honour recognises a career spent not merely observing international relations, but working at the point where diplomacy, commerce and national interest meet.