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By Colin Robertson

June 2, 2025

For Prime Minister Mark Carney, June will not only be about making good his promises on internal trade and tax relief but using a month of summits to present a new Canadian face to the world.

Carney hosts the G7 in Kananaskis, Alberta, on June 15-17, then meets with European Union leaders in Brussels on June 23, before heading to the Hague for the NATO Summit June 24-25. All three summits will test his chops as a diplomat and his declaration that “Canada is ready to take a leadership role in building a coalition of like-minded countries who share our values.”

The geopolitical backdrop is bleak: populism, polarization, protectionism, and continuing conflicts on three continents. And, with President Donald Trump, we can no longer count on the U.S. being there for us when it comes to trade and collective security.

For decades, the world has looked to G7 and NATO summits to provide direction, action and relief. But there is no longer any consensus for the G7 founding creed of freer trade, open markets, the advancement of democracy and, in recent years, climate change.

After a half-century of operation, the G7 needs a reset but, given the divergent personalities and perspectives, it is not going to happen in Kananaskis.

Just getting a joint communique is no sure thing, as Justin Trudeau learned when Canada last hosted the G7 in Charlevoix, where Donald Trump rescinded American consent.

It would be a signal achievement if Carney could persuade leaders to spend the remainder of Canada’s G7 chairmanship coming to grips with questions around national industrial policies, supply chain resilience, digitalization, AI, defence spending and its debt implications, changing trade flows, and a world where the dollar may no longer be king and non-market economies play by another set of rules.

While the Prime Minister’s Office has not confirmed the list of guest countries invited to Kananaskis, that list reportedly includes Australia, Mexico, Ukraine, Brazil and South Africa, with India’s invitation and attendance still uncertain. If G7 leaders were ambitious, they would also commit to rethinking permanent membership — for example, adding India and Brazil in recognition of their new economic status.

Success at the NATO summit will hinge on two things. First is continuing arms and funding for Ukraine. Even if the US, Hungary and Slovakia do not sign on, the rest should also apply further sanctions on Russia. Second is a commitment to rearmament, developing a defence production capacity that does not depend on the United States. While meeting the level of 2 percent GDP spending on defence will no longer be sufficient, achieving consensus to spend up to 5 percent is unlikely.

The meeting with EU leadership is usually a routine stock-taking of our 2017 Comprehensive Trade and Economic Partnership (CETA) and Strategic Partnership Agreement. Carney would like Canadian business to take more advantage of EU trade opportunities, but the protectionist instinct on both sides of the Atlantic is deeply entrenched, especially when farmers are involved.

Returning to the global stage as a useful and responsible player when it comes to trade, burden-sharing on defence and quietly fixing things should be our North Star.

More urgently, given the meeting’s timing on the eve of the NATO summit, Carney has said he’d like to confirm Canada’s participation in the EU’s €150 billion defence procurement scheme, ReArm Europe, before July 1st. As Carney has said, “Seventy-five cents of every dollar of capital spending for defence goes to the United States; that’s not smart.”

The net results for Canada of these three summits are likely to be relatively modest but, with Carney’s force of personality, experience and ambition, they will signal a re-engaged Canadian activism in multilateralism.

Since World War II, Canada has traditionally balanced our preponderant U.S. bilateral relationship with active participation in multilateral forums.

Initially, Canada’s summitry agendas were implemented with activism, initiative and ideas. That, over the years, shifted into the complacency of just ‘being there’.

Where once we actively sought leadership positions and seconded our foreign service to the UN, Commonwealth and Francophonie, we withdrew and depended on reports. Where once there was a Canadian maple leaf on food shipments, expedience now means just writing a cheque to an international organization. This may have served the bean-counters, but it has done little to advance Canadian interests in an increasingly complicated world. Folding CIDA into GAC and letting the brand disappear was a mistake.

While the world does not need the pompous presumption of “more Canada”, Canada does need “more world” especially as we are now obliged to hedge, for existential reasons, our dependence on the United States.

Carney understands this and he is acting accordingly to make us the “strongest economy in the G7”. To achieve more self-reliance, the focus, rightly, is on the home front of slashing internal trade barriers and “build, baby, build”, but the external pledge to diversify trade while attracting talent is equally important.

Returning to the global stage as a useful and responsible player when it comes to trade, burden-sharing on defence and quietly fixing things should be our North Star. To our international partners, it will signal a new seriousness of purpose that matches the gravity of the current situation. It means seeing the world as it is, not as we wish it, and acting accordingly even with those whose systems or behavior we deplore.

It will oblige more investments in defence diplomacy and development. It will mean testing new ideas and initiatives on the part of ministers, premiers and mandarins. It must have the active support of business, labour and civil society. It will require planning, patience, pragmatism and a tolerance for trial and error. It requires a hard-headed realism and a recognition of limits.

These were all once the traits that defined Canadian foreign policy. With practice and perseverance, they will again.

Contributing Writer Colin Robertson, a former career diplomat, is a fellow and host of the Global Exchange podcast with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute in Ottawa.