NATO, G7 leaders to focus on terrorism at meeting this week

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The deadly Manchester terrorist attack will put extra focus on measures to combat global terrorism and radical Islamic extremism when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sits down with U.S. President Donald Trump and other Western leaders at the NATO and G7 summits later this week.

NATO's 28 leaders gather in Brussels on Thursday for the meeting, which is Mr. Trump's first multilateral summit, at which he intends to push the military alliance to do more to fight terrorism and to boost defence spending significantly.

During a visit to Washington on Tuesday, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan told reporters the Manchester bombing drives home the growing threat of global terrorism and the need for allied co-operation.

John Ibbitson: Western leaders must keep alliances until U.S. comes to its senses

"This just reminds us that we need to be able to keep up the pressure and making sure that not just our military, but all our security agencies are working hand in hand," he said.

"Because it's not just about [the Islamic State] now, it's also about Boko Haram, Abu Sayyaf. We've got to make sure that some of these organizations don't get into more formal linkage and so we're looking at a much broader picture, not just focused on one area. Because as you can see where the threats are, they are becoming global."

Mr. Trump, who wants NATO to take on a bigger role in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, is also expected to press NATO partners to increase defence spending to 2 per cent of economic output every year by 2024. Canada spends about 1 per cent of its gross domestic output on defence. But a Canadian official said the Prime Minister does not expect to face the same kind of pressure from the U.S. President to boost defence spending as his European allies, because Canada has military trainers in Iraq and is taking on a significant NATO leadership role in Latvia.

"Missions and operations and actual deployments, NATO knows they can count on Canada," the official said, who also noted Mr. Trudeau will brief allies on the new defence policy review that will be announced on June 7.

NATO leaders will be watching carefully to see if Mr. Trump is supportive of an alliance he once called obsolete and for his signals on Russia, which annexed Crimea in 2014 and is accused of trying to disrupt democratic elections in the United States and Europe.

A senior official said the Prime Minister has issues he hopes to broach in a one-on-one with the President either at the NATO summit or the G7 meeting in Taormina, Italy, on Friday and Saturday, including negotiations on the North American free-trade agreement that are to start soon.

"He will be keen to talk to him about Canada's contribution to NATO as well as the importance of the G7 group to get together to discuss broader world issues. … And, of course, we will continue to have conversations with him that we have been having for the past several months about the Canada-U.S. relationship and the diversity of that relationship," one official said.

A point of friction is expected to be the UN Paris climate accord. Mr. Trump promised to back out of it during the U.S. election campaign. Since he moved into the White House in January, U.S. officials have sought to weaken the language coming out of any international meeting at which climate-change action was on the agenda.

Environment Minister Catherine McKenna attended a dinner on Tuesday in Berlin with ministers from China and the European Union, where they agreed to co-ordinate international efforts to ensure the momentum established at Paris continues to build, even if Mr. Trump pulls out of the accord.

"Everyone wants to bring the U.S. in because we have all worked very closely together, but we need to move forward," she said in a telephone conference call. "There is really no option: it is for the future of our planet and there is huge economic opportunity."

Still, officials say the goal of NATO and G7 leaders is to build a trusting relationship with the often erratic U.S. President.

But Mr. Trudeau's former foreign-policy adviser, Roland Paris, said no one can predict how Mr. Trump will behave when he is in the room.

"Sometimes we get glimpses of a statesman who wants to co-operate with America's allies and partners, and at other times there is the irrepressible disruptor who views even America's closest partners as problematic competitors," Mr. Paris said in an interview. "He is unpredictable and I am sure there is a certain amount of trepidation of all G7 countries and NATO allies about what Trump will actually say or perhaps even tweet during these meetings."

After the two summits, Mr. Trudeau will travel to Rome for an audience with the Pope at which he intends to ask for a formal apology for the role of the Catholic Church in the residential school system.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission included the demand for a papal apology – to survivors, their families and communities – in its report on the tragic legacy of residential schools.

While in Italy, Mr. Trudeau will also visit Amatrice, the site of a devastating earthquake in August, 2016, and hold bilateral talks with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni.

With reports from Adrian Morrow and Shawn McCarthy