Kananaskis (Canada) (AFP) – Gender equality, climate change, biodiversity, poverty, health, gay rights and more — the list of issues missing at the Canada G7 from past summits is long. The G7 gathering has been carefully planned to ensure US President Donald Trump agreed to attend at all, and Canada is keen to avoid a public dust-up. Official agenda items are the global economic outlook and energy security, with organizers naming priorities as critical mineral supply chains and AI adoption, as well as “international peace and security.”
Last year’s Group of Seven summit in Italy, when Joe Biden was US president, ended with a joint declaration promising better ties with Africa, action on poverty, and determination to tackle “the triple crisis of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss.” Such subjects are almost totally absent at the G7 talks this year in order to placate Trump, said John Kirton of the G7 Research Group at the University of Toronto. “There’s no point in putting them on the agenda if the Americans will just refuse to discuss them. And if you put too many of them on, Trump wouldn’t even come,” he said.
Kirton added that the schedule was also crowded out by crises from Ukraine to the Middle East, with G7 nations increasingly concerned with defense spending rather than development aid. For the G7 — founded 50 years ago by the world’s leading economies at the time — such a lurch in priorities poses major questions about the club’s purpose and future. But, for the Trump administration, the group is just returning to its original function of promoting global economic stability and growth. “Canada knows its audience, and if it wants a unified outcome of this year’s G7 leaders summit, then it should stick close to traditional G7 values while avoiding controversial topics,” said Caitlin Welsh of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The impact on the ground has alarmed many campaigners who say the G7 reduction of foreign aid is hitting millions of the world’s poorest, threatening food supplies, water, education, and health. “The G7’s retreat from the world is unprecedented and couldn’t come at a worse time,” said Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar. “Rather than breaking from the Trump administration’s cruel dismantling of USAID and other US foreign assistance, G7 countries like the UK, Germany, and France are instead following the same path.”
Oxfam calculated that G7 nations, which provide three-quarters of all official development assistance, are cutting aid by 28 percent between 2024 and 2026. No joint communique is expected at the end of the summit on Tuesday to avoid the potential failure for all members to agree on the text. But there is one way that the non-US members of the G7 are fighting back — discreetly. An unexpected item on the agenda is to “boost collaboration to prevent, fight and recover from wildfires.”
The wildfire issue “allows us to talk about climate change without saying it directly because we know that unfortunately not everyone likes it,” a Canadian official speaking anonymously told AFP. Both Canada and the United States are increasingly affected by major forest fires — worsened by climate change — including blazes that burnt down swathes of Los Angeles earlier this year. Professor Kirton said the wildfires agenda tactic was “clever rather than sneaky.” “They saw wildfires as a point of entry, and one that would work with Donald Trump.” Kirton highlighted that wildfires are currently causing damage across the US states of North and South Carolina, both Trump heartlands. “That’s getting into his MAGA base,” he said.
© 2024 AFP
