Trudeau to visit Canadian troops in Latvia

Prime minister will wave the flag before NATO meeting. Soldiers are Canada’s largest European force in 10 years

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will visit Canadian troops in Latvia before attending the NATO summit in Brussels next week.

The visit will be an opportunity for Trudeau to reaffirm Canada’s commitment to the NATO alliance and Euro-Atlantic security, the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement Tuesday.

The Canadian-led multinational NATO battle group was established in Latvia as the alliance’s response to Russia’s surprise annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its invasion of eastern Ukraine.

Canada’s leadership of the battle group represents the country’s largest sustained military presence in Europe in over a decade.

Trudeau’s visit will mark the first-ever bilateral visit to Latvia by a Canadian prime minister.

The announcement of the stop comes as Canada and other alliance leaders prepare to head to the NATO summit in Belgium — meetings that are already promising to elicit some fireworks thanks to Donald Trump.

The U.S. president has sent pointed letters to the leaders of several NATO allies, including Germany, Belgium, Norway and Canada, calling on them to meet the alliance’s defence spending targets.

In the June 19 letter to Trudeau, Trump says there is “growing frustration” in the U.S. with North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies like Canada that have not increased defence spending as promised.

“This frustration is not confined to our executive branch. The United States Congress has taken note and is concerned as well,” Trump writes.

“The United States is increasingly unwilling to ignore this alliance’s failure to meet shared security challenges.”

The letter arrived with tensions between Canada and the U.S. at a dramatic high, thanks to an ongoing dispute over American tariffs on steel and aluminum imports that have prompted Canada and other European countries to impose politically targeted retaliatory tariffs.

It also comes in the wake of a stormy end to the G7 meetings in Quebec, when Trump called Canada’s prime minister “dishonest, meek and weak” and backed out of the final joint communique issued by the G7 leaders.

The Liberals promised last year to increase spending on the military by 70 per cent.

Trump has threatened to leave NATO if member states do not increase contributions.

His letter to Angela Merkel was especially pointed, the New York Times reported. A series of presidential tweets noted Germany’s NATO spending, complaining that the U.S. “pays close to the entire cost of NATO — protecting many of these same countries that rip us off on trade.”