Canada’s chance to help shape the world
Among the Canadian Prime Minister’s chief responsibilities is their role as the country’s top diplomat.
The Prime Minister represents the country at major global forums like the G7, G20, United Nations General Assembly, National North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summits, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). They’re also sometimes responsible for hosting global summits here in Canada. Since 1981, for instance, Canada has hosted the G7/G8 seven times, including most recently in 2018 in La Malbaie, Quebec.
Hosting a summit at home is a major opportunity to influence the global policy agenda by championing a timely and important cause or issue. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promoted gender equality and the Oceans Plastic Charter at the 2018 Summit. Similarly, in 2010, former Prime Minister Stephen Harper led the Child and Maternal Health Initiative at the G8 meeting in Huntsville. At the 1995 Summit in Halifax, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien championed the lowering of international trade barriers, a Canadian imperative to creating opportunities through open markets — 30 years later, the topic has more relevance than ever. As is clear from these examples, the host government can have a considerable influence over the agenda. Holding the pen, as it is described, can be quite powerful.
In 2025, Canada is once again holding the pen. We assumed the year-long G7 presidency in January, at a time of geopolitical chaos, amidst the Trump administration’s disruptive foreign and trade policies, and in an uncertain place for Canada in the global order. Beyond this backdrop of global upheaval, Canada is also facing its own political uncertainties at home, with potentially as many as three prime ministers in the months leading up to the G7.
With all that happening globally, continentally and domestically, Foreign Ministers recently met in Charlevoix, Quebec, and G7 leaders are set to meet in June in Kananaskis, Alberta for the 50th anniversary of the first G7 meeting.
This represents a huge opportunity for Canada to influence the global agenda consistent with our national interests. Yet there’s a fast-shrinking window, between now and the Summit, for Canadian officials to develop and execute a strategy that can start to shape a consensus around a new set of global arrangements that are responsive to this era of geopolitical uncertainty.
A WORLD IN FLUX
The Trump administration’s first several weeks in office have tested various assumptions about American policy and broader international arrangements. Its antagonism towards traditional allies like Canada and nods to long-time adversaries like Russia has left policymakers in international capitals feeling rather destabilized. This is already leading to new thinking in Europe and elsewhere about defence spending — where the UK recently announced it will increase its military spending from 2.3 percent of GDP to 2.5 percent — as well as geopolitical alliances more broadly and the future of globalization itself.
There’s a strong sense that the Trump administration’s provocations cannot be fully explained by the President alone. While the President’s personal comportment and ideological rootlessness have no doubt contributed, there’s more happening here. It reflects a broader view within U.S. foreign policy circles — particularly within the Republican Party — that it is in American interests to revisit key parts of the international system of governance, security and trade.
Since the inauguration, Trump and other administration spokespersons have threatened and moved on global tariffs, committed to withdrawing from key global institutions including the World Health Organization (WHO) and certain United Nations organizations, and openly discussed a shift towards multipolarity. It’s not hyperbole to say that these actions represent some of the biggest developments in global arrangements in decades. They have huge implications for commerce, security and broader forms of international co-operation. It has been said that we’re living through the end of the liberal world order.
As a trade-dependent country for whom trade with the U.S. represents one-fifth of GDP, these developments matter a great deal. The President’s stop-start-threat-launch-retreat-relaunch of “economic warfare” (including unprecedented tariffs) has increased economic uncertainty to historic highs and transformed our politics. A protracted dispute could have lasting economic effects as well as significant implications for Canadian defence and security.
These risks are heightened because Canadian policymakers failed to heed the warnings from the first Trump presidency, and the second has hit like a ton of bricks. We’ve neglected key areas of policy including our own defence and security and the country’s poor productivity. These aren’t the failures of a single government; they represent complacency and inaction across successive governments. The net result is that we’re now playing catch up. While we can — and will — shore up these weaknesses, it will not happen overnight. The G7 presidency offers a rare chance to project onto the world stage how a stronger, more prosperous Canada will make a positive difference domestically, continentally and globally, while we continue to focus on getting our own house in order.
CANADA’S WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY AT THE G7
The world order is shifting in ways not seen since the Second World War. For Canada, this G7 presidency will therefore hold out even greater significance than previous meetings on Canadian soil given the geopolitical context. Yet there’s been limited media attention or statements from the federal government with the exception of a recent uptick in G7-related news through the joint statement of the G7 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Charlevoix earlier this month.
While Foreign Ministers discussed issues of global importance, including Ukraine’s long-term prosperity and security, regional peace and stability in the Middle East, and stability and resilience in Haiti and Venezuela, it failed to recognize an opportunity to focus G7 partners on the implications of new global arrangements.
In effect, one of the biggest challenges to our G7 presidency, between now and mid-June, is our ability to set clear political direction for what Canada will aim to get out of the Summit, given both the instability of our own political leadership — from de facto caretaker mode, to swearing in of a new Prime Minister, and a much-anticipated federal election — and the constant barrage of tariff threats and actions which has commanded the undivided attention of our political leaders. These haven’t been the political conditions to prioritize the G7 presidency and build momentum for Summit outcomes aligned with Canada’s interests.
But, seen more optimistically, this is a huge opportunity for Canada. We have as much interest as any country — and perhaps more — to address the disruptions in global trade and commerce led by the Trump administration and assert Canada’s place in the transition to a new world order.
It naturally prompts the question: what exactly might this new world order look like, and how can Canada use its G7 presidency to solidify its place therein?
If the post-Cold War period came to be marked by unipolarity and what Dani Rodrik has characterized as “hyperglobalization,” one gets the sense that the future will be defined by multipolarity and an effort to rebalance the relationship between globalization and national identity, international co-operation and national sovereignty.
An orderly transition to a new form of globalization must be about incorporating evolving thinking about localized production and even forms of economic nationalism (particularly in certain sectors and technologies) within a broader framework that still prioritizes the relatively free flow of capital, goods and people, as well as global co-operation on other issues like climate change and collective security.
Globalization 2.0, as one might describe it, will be marked by a version of what former Prime Minister Harper called “enlightened sovereignty,” which places a significant emphasis on national self-determination but also recognizes that the proper exercise of sovereignty is often found in different forms of bilateral and multilateral co-operation, whereby international agreements such as free trade deals or climate accords can at times represent a healthy tradeoff between national self-determination and global linkages.
Canada can leverage its G7 presidency to set a common vision among partners around rebuilding a framework that aims to achieve a sweet spot along this axis. The challenge for G7 leaders will be to help manage this transition without throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.
HOW CANADA CAN DRIVE ITS VISION FOR THE G7
With pen in hand, Canada’s goal here must be to challenge the excesses of the Trump administration’s America First policy framework — including trade protectionism and its hostilities towards democratic allies — while recognizing that its views about the evolution of globalization aren’t without merit. Canada can use its G7 presidency to enable such a conversation and rebuild a consensus in favour of a recalibrated form of global co-operation that’s more attentive to national aspirations.
To leverage this opportunity, it’s essential that the government approaches the G7 presidency with a greater focus on this changing global order and how partners must still engage, together, on global issues rooted in an expression of national sovereignty. Working backwards from the Leaders’ Summit of June 15 to 17, the government should develop and execute a strategy that can start to shape a consensus on a new set of global arrangements.
This should come in the form of interviews, op-eds and speeches, where Canadian government representatives lay out the vision for a Globalization 2.0 that acknowledges the tensions and trade-offs between globalization and national self-determination. It should be followed by dedicated meetings with U.S. officials to re-establish the foundations for mutually beneficial exchange, as well as bilateral meetings with G7 partners to coalesce around an allied stance on how to tackle and succeed within the framework of Globalization 2.0. The goal should be to build a narrative around the Summit, including some of the institutional and policy reforms that might come with a reconceptualization of globalization.