Can the G7 leaders still find anything to agree about?
Fifty years ago this fall the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States met in a castle outside Paris for three days of meetings, at the conclusion of which they issued the Declaration of Rambouillet, a 15-point statement of principles and commitments.
Noting that they were "each responsible for the government of an open, democratic society, dedicated to individual liberty and social advancement," the Group of Six said they had come together because of "shared beliefs and shared responsibilities."
The leaders pledged to "strengthen our efforts for closer international co-operation and constructive dialogue among all countries," "restore growth in the volume of world trade" and "restore greater stability in underlying economic and financial conditions in the world economy."
In June 1976, with Canada at the table to create the G7, the leaders met in Puerto Rico and declared that, "The interdependence of our destinies makes it necessary for us to approach common economic problems with a sense of common purpose and to work toward mutually consistent economic strategies through better co-operation."
Last year, when the leaders of the G7 met in Italy for the 2024 summit, they agreed to a nearly 20,000-word joint communique, covering their shared stances on an expansive array of global issues, including Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war, food security, climate change, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, migration and the global economy. The pronoun "we" appeared dozens of times.
Even if it's fair to ask how much all the words really amount to, there is something to be said for the value of the world's seven most powerful democracies coming together to express common views and beliefs — in addition to the specific, tangible initiatives that often flow from their annual gatherings.
But in 2025, on the occasion of the 50th of these meetings, it's unclear on how much the seven leaders of these countries can still agree. Such lack of consensus would at least underline how much the world has changed in the last few months.
The ghost of CharlevoixIt's unlikely that the 50th meeting of the G7 will produce an expansive communique. A senior Canadian official, speaking to reporters this week, suggested the leaders will sign off on some number of narrower statements on specific issues.
In that case, the results of the 2025 summit might resemble the output of the 2019 summit in France, which produced a succinct 259-word declaration agreed to by all leaders, alongside specific statements on gender equality and Africa, and a pair of chair "summaries" reviewing the discussions that were had.
That summit in Biarritz was notably the last time Donald Trump attended a G7 summit. It was also the first after the G7's infamous blow-up in Charlevoix, Que. And the memory of that 2018 summit — the last time Canada played host — hangs over this year's gathering in Kananaskis, Alta.
The Charlevoix gathering is most remembered for what happened shortly after it had seemingly concluded. Trump, apparently aggrieved by statements Justin Trudeau made in his closing news conference about American tariffs on steel and aluminum, used Twitter to blast the prime minister and declare that the United States was renouncing the summit's communique.
But those tweets were just the culmination of what had been a fractious 48 hours as the leaders and their advisers haggled over the wording of the communique.
The United States wanted the concluding statement to refer to "a" rules-based international order, not "the" rules-based international order (essentially a disagreement over the current existence of a rules-based international order). The United States didn't want to make any reference to the Paris Accords on climate change (Trump had pulled the U.S. out of the agreements in 2017). There were other differences over Iran and plastic pollution.
A final communique was ultimately produced — agreed to just moments before Trump departed — but not all of the differences could be papered over: the split over climate change was explicitly acknowledged in the text.
The example of Charlevoix may have influenced Biarritz. And it may be helping guide the approach to Kananaskis.
The amount of work needed to get a consensus document "would really mean a race to the bottom" for what would be included, Peter Boehm, who was Trudeau's top negotiator at the Charlevoix summit, said in a recent interview with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.
This is also, of course, a summit that will be held amid a trade war being waged between some of the countries at the table.
The first goal for Carney — who has some experience with international summits as a former central bank governor and finance official — at next week's meetings might simply be to avoid another blow-up. And that might mean aiming for a lower level of agreement, perhaps in line with the official priorities the prime minister announced last week — which included countering foreign interference and transnational crime, improving joint responses to wildfires, fortifying critical mineral supply chains and harnessing artificial intelligence.
"There is value in keeping the U.S. engaged by pursuing co-operation on a narrower set of priorities," says Roland Paris, a professor of international affairs and a former adviser to Trudeau.
What message will this year's G7 send?But if the seven leaders can no longer agree about many things — including big, fundamental things like climate change or the war in Ukraine — it's tempting to ask whether the G7 still makes sense as a group.
"The G7's internal strains mirror the larger fragmentation of multilateral governance, at a moment when the world urgently needs more, not less, co-operation," Paris says.
Kim Nossal, a foreign policy scholar at Queen's University, says there is still value in the leaders of these seven nations coming together in person to take a measure of each other and discuss global issues.
"It seems to me that, from the perspective of one of the other [leaders], that it remains a useful institution to keep going until or unless the United States under Trump trashes it and burns it down," Nossal says.
He said a relatively narrow agreement could send an implicit message about the state of the world (Nossal and I spoke last week, before government sources began to suggest a broad joint communique would not be forthcoming).
"A good outcome is one where there is a relatively anodyne general communique at the end that the Americans sign off on that demonstrates quite clearly to the world just how far removed the Americans are from engagement," Nossal says.
"That provides then an incentive for the remaining members of the West to double down on working with each other to address questions that the Americans no longer are interested in such as, for example, climate change."
If there is no longer a unanimously held belief among the G7 in shared responsibilities, that will put an even greater onus on those nations who still believe in common purpose.
cbc.ca
