The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - What's on the Table at the G7 Summit?

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

With global trade being the focus of this month's G7 summit, can Canada reach an agreement with the U.S. to resolve their trade dispute? For more about the policy implications of the G7, Paul Samson, president of CIGI, the Centre for International Governance Innovation joins Steve Paikin to discuss.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

With global trade being the focus of this month's G7 summit, can Canada reach an agreement with the US to resolve their trade dispute? For more about the policy implications of the G7, we're joined by Paul Sampson. He is president of CG, the Center for International Governance Innovation, and he joins us now from Banff, Alberta. Paul, it's great to have you on the program. How are you doing? Thank you. Great to see you. Everything's good here. Well, what's the atmosphere like there? I think that's where we want to start. Super busy. There's so much going on with all those leaders arrived

and now all the other leaders. There's actually another G7 worth of leaders for meetings tomorrow. Today's starting off with bilaterals. Yeah, when you say bilaterals, just give us a better understanding of what that means. Is it literally just the two heads of government or are there other staffers in the room or what?

Well, in the case of Prime Minister Cardinal and President Trump, I understand it literally is just a tad of tap. There might be one or two others in the room. Maybe not. It's the smallest it gets. Some of the other ones will be bigger, where there will be full delegations, you know, half a dozen or so in these bilateral meetings. But they're pretty small and they're generally not open to the media at all.

Gotcha. Let me ask you about an issue that I know you care deeply about, and that is you are the convener for something called Think7, which is a group of leading think tanks from G7 countries and beyond. And I'm told that you have drafted your own communique

and presented it in April to the G7 leadership. And on the top of your agenda was getting them to address AI. Do you know for a fact that they will, in fact, deal with that at this summit? Yeah, we did do a big process called the think7.org. You can find all the recommendations online. AI was at the top of the list, cutting across all the issues, whether it was energy, security, cooperation on supply chains, it was the top of list for us and

they will be talking about that absolutely here. I understand AI and quantum technologies are going to be a substantive discussion, as they were yesterday in Ottawa with the PM, PM Stammer, you know, bilateral that happened. I'm going to ask a really nasty follow-up question here, which is, given that the President of the United States has violated so many norms as it relates to taking money from industries related to artificial intelligence, and therefore wants to gut so much of the regulation that could be in place as it relates to artificial intelligence, what possible hope do you have that something constructive is going to come out of all this? Yeah, I think it's a great question. It's definitely America first, and there's a lot of Trump first as well, as you're saying, but there are common security risks, right, around cyber attacks that would be coordinated

or bio weapons, you know, coming out of AI. So the US has an interest to cooperate on those kind of things. And then supply chains getting these data centers powered with energy, Canadian energy probably in many cases. It's important to the US as well to cooperate a bit here. Otherwise it's America first and Trump first, as you say. Well, where does that leave the rest of the world? They're trying to get in, right?

That's partly why everyone else is here. The European leaders want a piece of the action. They don't want to be left out on AI. India will be an important partner, Brazil, Indonesia, the other ones that are here, South Korea, Australia, UK. So they all want a piece of the action, and it's with big US companies and America first, it's tough, it's tough, but there's shared interests.

There are some. There may be shared interests, but there's no interest greater than the companies that have directly put money into the president's personal pocket. I mean, how do you get past that? Well, those companies have a huge amount of influence in Washington.

Their representatives are in high positions. They've got a lot of power. But there are some things they can't do in the US. So they need some cooperation. Let's hope that it's more rather than less. But it's not easy, as you say, absolutely. OK. I want to ask you about whether you think, well, let me take a step back. Under normal circumstances, convicted felons would not necessarily have

the right to come into Canada. The president of the United States is a convicted felon. Many people wonder whether he should have been invited at all. What's your view on that? Well, I think you'd have a question there for various leaders over time, right? Are you going to have a dialogue and work with those leaders? You need to. Or are you going to say, no, you can't come into the country?

I think from a pragmatic perspective, that's going to apply to the United States and other countries as well. So I think it was an easy decision for the government of Canada. They've got to work together. Yeah. But there's a group of people out there in the country that would love to have been able to send a message to the United States by not inviting him. But you think that would have been a bad move? I think I understand where they're coming from and there's a legitimate view there.

But do you want that? Imagine how much that would have blown up, right? Probably certainly with the Trump White House, but I think also typical Americans would have said, you're not willing to meet with our elected president. I don't think that would go over well. Well, all right, take the next step and tell us, tell those people who would rather he not be there,

what's the urgency in having him there? Why is it so important? Well, Canada's hosting the G7 and the United States is part of the G7, right? So everyone, all those leaders are invited. Well, Canada is hosting the G7 and the United States is part of the G7, right? So everyone, all those leaders are invited. So to exclude one would have been extremely unusual. So I think that that's the reason.

Would Canada have had a bilateral just between Prime Minister Carney and President Trump? Maybe not. Maybe not in Canada. Maybe not at this time. But the G7 is happening and he's the president of the United States. Okay, let's talk about something that really has fallen off the country's radar screen over the last many months and that is climate change. There are wildfires happening in the north of our province, there are wildfires happening in Alberta, we saw what wildfires just did in Los Angeles, California several months ago.

These are significant and daily reminders about the different world in which we live today and what climate change is doing. Do you suspect any of that is going to get a hearing at this summit? They're talking about energy security here, and that'll be a big deal. That opens up the door to, you know,

transforming the economy's decarbonizing industry, et cetera. So they will talk about it a little bit. There won't be any statement on climate change from the leaders. There won't be, you know, anything really about climate change specifically, and certainly not mitigation targets or the Paris commitment, that kind of thing. They're starting to think seriously about adaptation, though, as you say, because of forest fires and other things that are now just part of our lives. How disappointed should we be in your view that one of the most important existential issues for the planet isn't going to make the cut at this conference? Yeah, I think it is disappointing,

right? Like as you say, it's the top of the list for global issues. How can you not talk about it? I guess the answer would be if you're stuck at the G7, go hard in those other settings like the UN Convention on Framework Convention on Climate Change is meeting later this year. The stakes are going up and up for those meetings. At the risk of using a word, the economy trumps everything these days? It does right now because of the tariffs, because of the economic uncertainty,

because of debt levels, economic growth isn't very high. Every one of the G7 countries is like, how do we squeeze out a bit more growth in order to pay for health care, in order to do the environmental protection we'd want to do. So it's not surprising that they're very focused there, but it's unfortunate when it squeezes out everything else, as you say. Totally agree. Couple of minutes to go, I want to put two more issues on the table. How much has the conversation been affected by what's been going on

between Israel and Iran over the past few days? It's huge because that is a core conflict. Anytime something blows up in the Middle East, it's a big deal. Right now that conflict is escalating. It's a tit for tat. But each response is a little bit more than the last one. And there's a real concern it could escalate further and then spill over into a broader conflict or involve other countries. So huge deal. I'm not sure they're going to make any specific progress on it here,

but it's certainly looming very large in the background. Well, let me ask about progress or not for another conflict area in this world, and that of course is Russia-Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelensky is at this conference or has been invited to be at this conference, let's put it that way. What impact do you believe he can make by having access to all the G7 leaders? So he'll be part of the discussions tomorrow, where they open it up beyond the G7 countries.

He'll have some bilateral discussions. I feel like this is very valuable for him to have all the leaders there together. And potentially, the US will be a little bit more conciliatory until, you know, it isn't, right? There's a lot of flip-flopping and back and forth thing on what the US policy actually is on the Ukraine, in my view.

I think they might make a little bit of progress, but it's gonna have to involve the Russians as well. And that'll take place elsewhere after the G7. Gotcha. Paul, that was a great primer on what we should be looking towards over the next few days. So we're really grateful you could spare some time for us on TVO tonight.

Paul Sampson, President of the Centre for International Governance Innovation coming to us from Banff, Alberta. Thanks, Paul. Good to see you, Steve. Thanks a lot.