Front Burner - Can the G7 find order in the chaos?

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

Starting Sunday, political and economic representatives of a world order that Donald Trump is intent on shattering are gathering in Kananaskis, in Alberta's Rocky Mountains.That on its own would be high stakes. But add to it Mark Carney's aggressive national to-do list, and you've got two days that could show us how much Canada and the world have changed since Trump became president a second time.Aaron Wherry, a senior writer with CBC's Parliamentary Bureau, joins the show to unpack what he'll be watching for as he covers the event. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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Hi, I'm Ali Janes in for Jamie Boisson. You know who I feel bad for this morning? The person figuring out who stands where for the G7 family photo. To put Donald Trump next to Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky, who he recently berated in the Oval Office, or South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who he lectured about a non-existent white genocide in his country. Okay, probably not. Maybe next to the NATO secretary general?

No. Okay, leaders of France, Germany, Japan, all of who are dealing with terror blowback. Probably not. Okay, Trump has said nice stuff about Mexico's Claudia Shane bomb or maybe Italian Prime Minister Georgia Maloney. That could work. Anyway, you got the picture. Starting Sunday, political and economic representatives of a world order that Donald Trump is intent on shattering are gathering in Cananascis in Alberta's Rocky Mountains. That on its own would be high stakes, but when you add to it Mark Carney's

aggressive national to-do list, you've got two days that could show us how much Canada and the world have changed since Trump became president a second time. CBC senior writer Aaron Wary is with me and he's gonna be traveling to Alberta to cover the event. Hello, Aaron. Hey. Okay, so that stuff I mentioned off the top isn't even all of it.

I mean, just to give one more example, Carney has invited India's Narendra Modi. Ottawa accused his government of playing a role in the 2023 murder of a Canadian citizen, Hardee seeing Najjar. So lots of tension in this group, I would say. So can we just start with a general vibe check? Yeah, I think the vibe is, let's see how this works. I think in the pre-Trump era, particularly, it was easy to sort of discount these summits.

And now it really does feel, for reasons we'll get into, let's see how these two days go and what exactly happens and what exactly these leaders can possibly agree on. Yeah, I mean, because I don't think that any of this, as you're saying, you know, this guest list would not be that consequential if it weren't for Donald Trump, right? I mean, his actions since November have really scattered the deck for everyone who's attending. And we've heard a lot over the past few months about countries establishing a new order that doesn't include the US,

or at least one where the US's role is majorly diminished. And so do you think that that dynamic is gonna be at play here? I think we could see a bit of it. Usually these summits are about finding consensus on things and sort of laying out a resolution about where the collective seven leaders of the world's leading democracies, where they stand and how they view

the world and what they want to do. And I don't think you're going to see that level of consensus. And I think you may see in some ways where the United States and the other six kind of part ways. And you know, we have seen signs of Canada, Britain, France, Germany cooperating in a way or aligning themselves in a way that we haven't before and I think You know as much as they will try to sort of paper over differences as much as possible over these two days I think you could start to see

that dynamic sort of emerge in how the leaders talk about Not only the summit but sort of where they see the world at this point, right? I want to leave Canada's goals aside for a moment because we'll get into that in more detail in a sec, but if everyone but the U S got everything on their wishlist, what would they walk away with? Like, what is the point do you think this year? I mean, I think if this was a normal G7 or a pre-Trump G7, you would expect to see a statement on Ukraine, a statement on climate change, maybe some discussion of artificial intelligence and

the global economy and promoting open trade. I think in this case, you know, you might imagine that these leaders would want to use the moment to talk to Trump about what he's doing, particularly with tariffs, and try to broker or advance their own countries towards agreements with the United States or sort of their collective countries towards agreements with the United States. But that would be sort of the baseline expectation, I think, in terms of the issues and the things that they would be wanting to discuss, if it was possible to find consensus here.

I mean, talk to me more about the kind of balancing act you think that they're all facing here, in terms of trying to deal with Trump. Like, they are mostly in various states of terror of hell and needing to kind of not poke the bear too much and also not capitulate to him. Like how are they gonna deal with that balancing act? Yeah, I think that's a real tension and a real,

I imagine every leader coming into this summit is trying to figure out exactly how to play these two days and how to play their conversation with Donald Trump. I heard one sort of official say in another interview, former Canadian official say, you don't wanna in the interest of trying to find consensus sort of get pushed to the lowest denominator, sort of chase consensus to the point

where you just end up agreeing about very little. But you also don't want to go in there and have a big fight. The ghost of Charlevoix, the last time Canada hosted this, sort of hangs over this summit in a way that the goal is to kind of get through these two days, advance some agreement on certain issues, but don't have this kind of spectacular fallout the way we saw in 2018. Let's talk about the ghost of Charlevoix. I mean, it feels in a lot of ways like a lot of deja vu to the moment we're in now. Like there was a CBC headline from back then that says, G7 unity torpedoed by angry Trump tweets dismissing Trudeau as dishonest and weak. Just remind us what was going on,

you know, what were the stakes, what happened? Yeah, so I mean, that summit in Charlevoix in 2018, the last time Canada hosted, is mainly known for what happened really after the summit had ended. They'd agreed to a communique. The summit seemed to have been pulled off. And then Justin Trudeau sort of talked in his press conference about some issues he had with tariffs in the way the United

States was conducting itself. It's kind of insulting. And I highlighted that it was not helping in our renegotiation of NAFTA and that it would be with regret, but it would be with absolute certainty and firmness that we move forward with retaliatory measures on July 1st applying equivalent tariffs to the ones that the Americans have unjustly applied to us. Donald Trump apparently saw those comments and I think it's fair to say blew a gasket and announced that the US was renouncing the communique and wouldn't sign on to it. It's a betrayal, okay?

Essentially, double-crossing. Not just double-crossing President Trump, but the other members of the G7 who were working together and pulling together this communique. A special place in the hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door. And that's what— But I think, you know, it's also useful to remember that like even during that, those

two days, the tension was really high. They hadn't haggled over the communique for hours and hours. There was a big dispute over whether or not the communique could refer to the quote unquote rules-based international order because the United States didn't really want to acknowledge that. There was a dispute over climate change that came out in the communique where the other six countries took one position on climate and energy policy and the United States took another. There was a very famous photo that came out of that summit of Donald Trump kind of sitting

with his arms crossed staring at the other leaders while they at the last minute tried to come to some agreement on the communique. It felt kind of Renaissance painting-ish, like very, it was an amazing photo. Yes, it was sort of the perfect encapsulation of like Donald Trump and the world at that moment. And you saw after that summit the next year, France hosted it and they didn't even bother with trying to put out a big communique at the end of the summit. It just wasn't, I think they probably just decided it wasn't worth the trouble. But with that as the example, one of the things that people are going to be watching from Mark Carney is simply whether he can get through this summit with less drama. And if so, that will kind of be considered a victory. Right. So let's talk more about that because Trump 2.0 is even more unbridled than the Trump in these previous summits. We just saw

him deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles. If we didn't get involved, right now Los Angeles would be burning just like it was burning a number of months ago with all the houses that were lost. Los Angeles right now would be on fire and we have it in great shape and not playing around. He has supported arresting California's governor, who called Trump a dictator. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country. He's throwing himself a military birthday parade this weekend.

As tanks roll towards Washington to prepare for President Trump's military parade, the president with this warning to anyone who might show up to protest. If there's any protestor wants to come out, they will be met with very big force. By the way, for those people... And there are nearly 2000 anti-Trump protests planned across the US for Saturday, just the day before the G7 starts. So what kind of line do you think that Carney and other leaders have to walk here given just how hot the Trump situation is?

Yeah, I think there's kind of two issues here. One is how engaged will Donald Trump be in the G7 and how distracted will he be by what's going on at home for him and how will that sort of influence his own approach to these two days? Then I think the other thing is, especially at the closing news conferences, when typically each leader sort of talks to the press, there was, especially in the first Trump term, there was, at least in Canada, this kind of constant or regular expectation that the prime minister, in that case Justin Trudeau, would be asked for their opinion or their view of what was happening in the United States, particularly

when it seemed to kind of breach democratic or, you know, rights kind of based concerns. And I think there is going to probably be a moment, or there could be a moment where, you know, Mark Carney and the other leaders are asked, what about what's going on in the United States? And I think they will have to figure out how to navigate their answers to those questions, not least because we know that if Donald Trump is listening and watching, his reaction might not be polite. This is coming amidst this, you know, rearm Europe or readiness 2030 plan. 450 million European Union citizens should not have to depend on 340 million Americans to defend ourselves against 140 million Russians who cannot defeat 38 million Ukrainians.

Carney has pledged that Canada will increase its defense spending to 2% of our GDP. We just got into that on the show yesterday, if you guys want to find that in our feed. And all of this is to bulwark against an unreliable or potentially oppositional America, right? So what changes are these countries talking about making? Yeah I think it's fair to say there's now this worldwide effort to boost defense spending or at least you know in the Western world, Europe and Canada and others. We'll see how it comes up, if it comes up in these next two days.

But it is kind of oddly a place where the two sides, if there are, if you want to put it that way, sort of the United States and the rest of the world, the interests kind of align in a way because the you know, the US believes that other countries should be spending more on the military because they're carrying too much of the burden. And so they, in a way, should be happy to see other countries spending more on the military. But I think from the other point of view, the European and Canadian view, the idea is almost more that if the US isn't going to backstop the

you know Western world, then they have to spend money to make up for that gap. And so I don't know if it's going to come up necessarily or explicitly in this context in these next two days, but it is kind of an interesting spot where there is potentially a bit of an agreement on where the world needs to be going. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. We've, you know, mentioned that many countries attending are in trade disputes with the U.S. Do you think there's a chance that there could be some movement on that in Kamen Asakus?

I mean, it's always possible. There will be individual bilateral meetings between Trump and the different leaders. You never know what can come out of those conversations. I think though that especially from the Canadian side, the early sort of expectation setting is, you know, don't expect a breakthrough before the G7 or at the G7. So I think that's probably a fair expectation that we're not going to see a bunch of trade deals signed next week.

But maybe even just rhetorically, in Trump's interactions with these different leaders, you may see some signs of progress or some hint of where the discussion's going. I mean, in a typical sense, is the G7 the kind of venue where real work gets done anyway? Like is it more just like have a nice time, shake some hands, drink some wine, don't make anyone mad.

You know, the hard work continues back at home or does stuff get done on these kind of issues normally? I think it's a combination of the two. You know, talking to people who know sort of international affairs and foreign policy better, they will say there's value in leaders sitting down and talking to each other face to face and discussing their worldviews, explaining themselves to each other, building relationships. And I do think there are, you will see specific initiatives come out of G7 summits, you know, where the

leaders agree to do things, where the leaders sort of come together and sort of galvanize action, you know, on, if you look at Ukraine, if you go back even further to the financial crisis in 2008, 2009. But it's not a comprehensive trade negotiation where negotiators are in the room hammering out a deal. It's two days of fairly high level meetings and that can lead to things, but it's not, you know, as I say, I don't think you're going to see a bunch of trade deals next week

that suddenly end this massive trade war. Speaking of deals, our colleagues have reported that Mark Carney's government has been holding some high-level trade meetings with the White House over recent weeks, and they've got a working document that outlines details of a potential deal. Do we know any more about that? We don't know a ton. We know sort of in broad strokes that they're talking, that there have been some private conversations back and forth between Donald Trump and Mark Carney.

We know that Donald Trump's grand proposal for military firm missile defense, the Golden Dome, is up for discussion. But we don't really know exactly what's on the table or exactly what's being offered. I think it would also be fair to say we don't even know what they're getting to at this point. Are they getting to an actual deal? Are they getting to an agreement to get to an agreement, which is what we saw with the United Kingdom? I think Mark Carney himself has pointed to the fact that

there hasn't been retaliation from Canada to the latest round of steel tariffs by the United States, and so that is, in Mark Carney's view, sort of something he's holding back because it looks like progress is being made. We have had really strong counter-tariffs against the Americans already. We are looking at different scenarios right now. And we will take a decision, but we need a bit more time right now, not too long.

We are in intensive negotiations with the Americans and in parallel preparing reprisals if those negotiations do not succeed. I think that's, you know, reading the tea leaves, that seems positive. But again, I think it's probably expecting way too much to imagine that this is going to get solved over dinner next week in Kananaskis. Right. So Carney has laid out his three priorities. And I don't want to be too disparaging, but there is like a kind of G7 mad libs quality to them. So why don't I go through them? The first is protecting Canadian communities and the world by strengthening peace and security, countering foreign interference, crime and improving wildfires response. The second is building energy security and accelerating the digital transition with a stronger critical mineral supply chain and using artificial

intelligence to boost economic growth. And the third is finding new quote enormous private investments to build infrastructure jobs and markets. Does anything jump out to you about that? So it looks to me like an attempt in certain places to make this summit more tangible, you know, and they talk about wildfire response. That's something that the Canadian public can, can understand and see as very tangible. So if something comes out about that, it won't just look like two days of meetings, it will look like something very practical came out of this meeting. It does though, at the same time, look like trying to find points of agreement or

points where all seven leaders are going to be able to sign off on these things. He's not going for Ukraine or climate change issues where there may be big differences of opinion. He's going for sort of very specific things and I would wonder whether that's what we're going to see coming out of this is sort of very specific commitments to these sort of three things that are I would say fairly uncontroversial. Talking about controversy though, you know as we were mentioning at the beginning, one of the people invited is Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. There's been some tense times here. So is this a sign of a diplomatic reset between the two countries? Possibly. I think we'll have to wait and see. The way to look at this is that Mark Carney is kind of in an odd position as both

the Prime Minister of Canada and the chair of the G7. position as both the Prime Minister of Canada and the chair of the G7. And that's sort of the way he has explained it, I think, too. As chair of the G7, he has decided to invite India. And it's, I think, useful to note that India has been invited to the last several G7s. In addition to the seven leaders, we should say, there's always a guest list of maybe a half dozen other countries that are invited to take part in the discussions. India has been there. You can see why.

It's obviously a big country with huge economic power. Of course, the flip side of that is all of the issues between India and Canada right now. And the way Mark Carney has talked about it is that he's invited Mr. Modi and that he and his counterpart have agreed to, in his words, continued law enforcement dialogue, that there's been some progress on that. And so, I mean, I think we have to kind of wait and see what that looks like. But I think it kind of also fits within some larger things we're seeing from Carney, which is he's sort of taking the opportunity of him coming into office as prime minister as a chance to start fresh on a bunch of relationships, both internationally and within the country. And we'll see whether he can stay clear of the trouble

or kind of advance things further than Justin Trudeau could. But at this moment, I think he's kind of using this as a new beginning to see what can happen. I guess in some ways this is also kind of a test of how he'll handle a big international summit as prime minister. So what are you looking for there? So I think a couple things. One is just how well he chairs these meetings, which can sound a bit trite, but I think it you know there are seven of the most powerful leaders in the world sitting around a table. Managing those

discussions isn't always easy, particularly when one of those seven leaders is Donald Trump. Mark Carney does actually have some experience, even as he's a new prime minister. He does have some new experience or some experience with international summits because of his time as a governor of the Central Bank in Canada and England and also in his time as a deputy minister in the finance department here in Ottawa. So he's not entirely a rookie at these sort of settings. And so you would think he would have some sense of how to run one of these things. I think we'll

see how that works. You know, given the guest list, given Donald Trump, given the tensions in the world, it's going to be quite challenging. But then I think the other part of it is what's going to come out of this meeting. We've been told that we shouldn't expect a large joint communique at the end of this. We're more likely to see what has been described as action-oriented statements. And so I think those communiques that they issue at the end of these summits can be, they can be a lot. You know, the last one was, I think, coming out of Italy, the last joint communiqué was

20,000 words. And it could seem like just a lot of words, but it is an expression of where these seven countries stand and what they believe in and what they agree on. And if we don't come out of this with a communique, which seems like the very likely scenario at this point, I think that's going to tell us something about where things stand between these seven nations and with the world. I had a conversation with Kim Nossol, a foreign policy scholar at Queens last week. And his feeling was, if there isn't a big statement at the end of this G7, that is going to tell us how divided these countries are. And it's also going to send a message that on things like climate change, the other six countries are

going to have to double down on their efforts because the United States isn't going to be with them. And so there's sort of two, I think, messages coming out of this are two things to watch. One is just how peacefully these two days go, but then also what is the message about how the world works now that's going to be sent by these two days and by how much or how little they can all agree on? All right. Well, we'll have to watch. Aaron, thank you so much and I hope you have a great time in Alberta.

Thanks. That is all for today. Frontburner was produced this week by Matthew Amha, Joytha Shingupta, Lauren Donnelly, Mackenzie Cameron, and Matt Muse. Our intern is Katie Teeling. Our YouTube producer is John Lee. Our music is by Joseph Shabason. Our senior producer is Elaine Chao. Our executive producer is Nick McKay-Blokos. I'm Allie Janes. Jamie will be back on Monday. Thank you so much for listening.