Trump OKs climate talks at G7 summit

OTTAWA • Canada has persuaded the Trump administration to consider backing a climate change-related initiative it wants to showcase when it hosts the G7 summit next year, The Canadian Press has learned.

The June gathering of leaders from the G7 countries at a resort in Quebec’s Charlevoix region will mark U.S. President Donald Trump’s first trip to Canada.

Trump has shown disdain for international multilateral groups, disparaging alliances such as NATO, pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate change agreement and tearing up trade deals such as the 12-country TransPacific Partnership.

But when it comes to the club of like-minded Group of Seven democracies — rounded out by Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Japan — Trump is engaged and wants the Charlevoix summit to succeed.

“He’s looking forward to coming. He wants to have a successful summit,” Peter Boehm, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s deputy minister for the summit, said Thursday. Trudeau formally launched Canada’s G7 presidency Thursday with a live Facebook event and said Canada will make preservation of the world’s oceans a major agenda item.

The Trump administration has given the green light to developing the theme in the pre-summit meetings during the first half of 2018, Boehm said.

That’s because the conversations will focus on how to preserve and bolster coastal areas that have been devastated by natural disasters, or face major threats.

“I think there is a certain relevance there. I know that the people I’ve talked to — and I have not talked to the president on this — there is an interest in pursuing this as one of our themes,” he said.

The U.S. felt the full force of the most recent tropical storm season as hurricanes battered Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico.

Boehm said it was too early to say whether Trump’s trip to the G7 would be expanded to included a bilateral Canadian visit. Trudeau has made several trips to Washington, but Trump has yet to set foot in Canada.