Canada-U.S. relations have reached new low

President Trump spoils G7 summit with rants, bluster and indifference

QUEBEC The expression “a bull in a china shop” comes to mind.

Put another way, despite the buffer of other world leaders and a complex international agenda, U.S. President Donald Trump still managed to make the weekend’s G7 summit meeting in Charlevoix all about him.

He managed that through rants before, during and after the twoday event, a nonchalant attitude when he was there as reflected in his chronic tardiness and an obvious lack of interest in anything others were talking about.

Trump arrived in a swirl of controversy and bluster, stayed less than 24 hours on Canadian soil, and left in the same condition and holding the same anti-G7 views.

And as for longer-term collateral damage, Canada-U.S. relations have reached a new low.

History will show Trump torpedoed and spoiled Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s summit — billed as a show of unity on economic trade, gender equality, purging plastics from the oceans and rescuing females living in crisis situations.

It was all summed up in an eightpage communiqué that Trump ripped to shreds with two tweets from his perch in Air Force One on his way to meet North Korean president Kim Jong Un.

In his tweets, Trump accused Trudeau of being “very dishonest and weak,” after Trudeau repeated the same criticism of Trump’s tariffs on Canadian aluminum and steel that he made before.

Trudeau said the national security excuses the U.S. used to justify the tariffs were an insult and Canada was not going to be pushed around. Trudeau made the comments at a news conference closing the summit. Trump was not there because he left early.

On Sunday in post-G7 Quebec City, as workers removed plywood covering shop windows and reporters put away unused gas masks, a few conclusions about this 6th summit Canada has sponsored were possible.

For one thing, instead of the crisis being in the streets of Quebec City as experienced in the 2001 Summit of the Americas, the tumult took place behind closed doors at the Fairmont Manoir Richelieu perched on a cliff in La Malbaie in Charlevoix where the Group of Seven met.

A photo tweeted by a German official showing a seated Trump, looking dour with his arms crossed while the other leaders looked on sternly, captured the mood in the clubhouse.

But the summit allowed the other six leaders to evolve, too. Despite the perils of poking the American bear, they revealed they no longer are willing to pretend to be friends with Trump in the international schoolyard.

“This summit will go down in history as the crystallization of a confrontation between the United States and their allies,” Université Laval political scientist Louis Bélanger said in an interview Sunday.

French President Emmanuel Macron was the first to go to bat for the summit communiqué and, indirectly, Trudeau.

“International co-operation cannot depend on anger and sound bites,” Macron said in a statement, clearly targeting Trump.

“You can rapidly destroy an incredible level of confidence with one tweet,” the Germans added in their own statement. “A united Europe is the response to America first.”

Trump’s advisers fired their own rockets back, with Trump principal economic adviser Larry Kudlow accusing Trudeau on CNN of having “stabbed us in the back” for making his comments at a news conference after Trump left.

Peter Navarro, a trade hardliner who has Trump’s ear, told Fox News “there’s a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump.”

Those remarks landed with a thud at the Chateau Frontenac Hotel in Quebec City Sunday where Trudeau was holding postsummit bilateral meetings.

Trudeau refused to comment on the debacle. The speculation is he didn’t want to pour more oil on the fire with Washington. The speculation on Trump’s attack on Trudeau is that he wants to look tough for his meeting with Kim Jong Un.

Trudeau did eventually tweet a response indicating in his mind the summit communiqué signed by all the leaders is very much alive despite Trump saying he no longer supports it.

Emerging later at the same hotel, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland tried to calm the waters.

“Canada does not believe that ad hominem attacks are a particularly appropriate or useful way to conduct our relations with other countries,” Freeland told reporters.

But while the politicians feuded, a calm returned to Charlevoix and this city after weeks of summit anxiety.

The good news is these events were light years away from the 2001 Summit of the Americas, where an estimated 30,000 protesters rocked a city drenched in tear gas and pepper spray for a week.

In all, police reported 13 arrests during the three days of what was only sporadic protest activity. No tear gas was used, there were no injuries and not a single act of vandalism was reported.

“Everything went very well and we are very proud,” said Quebec City police chief Robert Pigeon.

In La Malbaie, 140 kilometres east of Quebec City, there were more reporters than protesters, the $3.8-million fence built around the Manoir untouched.

But human rights organizers complained of overkill because of the massive presence of police who easily outnumbered protesters four to one.

Genèvieve Paul, the interim director of Amnesty International present for the event, said the sheer number created an unhealthy “climate of fear.” Many simply stayed away, she told reporters.

Residents of La Malbaie are anxious to see the fence removed. For now it stands as a symbol of the other under-reported story of the G7 — that it sparked an orgy of public spending.

Overall, Canada has devoted $604 million to its year as the head of the G7 presidency, and most of that was spent on security and logistics in Charlevoix.

Beyond the fence, a temporary prison was built in Clermont near La Malbaie at a cost of $1 million. It was not used. The G7 bought temporary showers for soldiers, which stayed in their crates.

At the Quebec City convention centre — converted into a hightech media centre with satellite hookups to La Malbaie — more than 1,000 reporters dined from the summit-provided buffet.

On Sunday, summit vans transported piles of unopened food boxes to local shelters and food kitchens.

International co-operation cannot depend on anger and sound bites.