Thoughts on BC Politics and More

Prime Minister Mark Carney pulled off a successful performance hosting the G7 summit in Kananaskis, Alta., say some world leaders and foreign policy experts commenting on his perceived pragmatism and savviness. Fen Osler Hampson, international affairs professor at Carleton University, said Carney guided the G7 “through the diplomatic Rockies,” navigating “shifting weather” on the global front and avoiding “avalanches and treacherous cliffs.” This year’s summit took place amid escalating violence between Israel and Iran, which pushed U.S. President Donald Trump to leave Alberta a day early. On Monday, G7 leaders published a statement affirming that Israel “has a right to defend itself” and that Iran “can never have a nuclear weapon" ... CLICK HERE for the full story

In a few days time, leaders of the world's advanced democracies gather in Kananaskis for the G7 meeting. That would be France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Great Britain, the US and (although increasingly as a courtesy) the economically-challenged Canada. But, this could be the last one: the G7 is a relic of a different era ... CLICK HERE for the full story

Mark Carney’s ability to balance Canada’s economic agenda while promoting its democratic values will be tested at the upcoming G7 summit after he expanded the invitation list to nations implicated in international murders. ... MP Sukh Dhaliwal, who represents the BC riding of Surrey-Newton, says he met with Carney and told him that hundreds of people had voiced concerns that Modi was attending the G7, due to being linked to an “assassination of a Canadian on Canadian soil.” “We’re a country of human rights. A country of law and justice,” Dhaliwal said ... adding that he reminded Carney that during the public inquiry into foreign interference, Justice Marie-Josee Hogue found that China and India were the two biggest nations interfering in Canada’s democratic processes ... CLICK HERE for the full story

The G-7 Summit is coming to Kananaskis, Alta., June 15-17. Canada is co-hosting the FIFA World Cup 26 in Vancouver and Toronto in almost a year. But the world is a ball of conflict and confusion. Hot wars. Cold wars. Trade wars. Is World War III underway and the West just doesn't know it? That is one of Bob Mackin's questions for this week's guest, Prof. Christian Leuprecht of the department of political science and economics at the Royal Military College of Canada and a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute ... CLICK HERE for the podcast

Donald Trump’s America First nationalism has forcefully yanked the world backward from its postwar consensus of interdependence and international cooperation. The G7 group of leading market economy countries will hold its  annual summit June 15-17 in Kananaskis, Alberta, under Canadian chairmanship, and under Trump’s tariff assault on all partners including G7 partners. The Summit, coming 50 years after Canada’s addition to the G6 made it the G7 in Puerto Rico in 1975, may or may not sustain the principle of mutual interest permitting the G7 to carry on. G7 members are mentally focused on the challenge the Trump administration poses to their own economic outlooks. But a preparatory meeting this week of G7 finance ministers in Banff avoided substantive discussion of the divisive and toxic US tariff assault on the global economy. Their description of the meeting as “productive” was an evasion of reality to keep the US at least partially in the consensus tent at the ministerial level ...