Politics Briefing newsletter: Trudeau meets one-on-one with Merkel, Macron and Modi

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Good morning,

The G20 summit is underway in Hamburg, Germany. While yesterday was marked by clashes between protesters and police officers, today will see bilateral and multilateral meetings. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has already held talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is hosting the event in her hometown, and participated in a working luncheon with leaders from member nations.  He'll also be meeting one-on-one with French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi today and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto tomorrow. Trade and climate change are the main topics of discussion but competing visions between the U.S. and nearly every other country threaten to make the talks unproductive. All eyes were on U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin as the two met for the first time in their current roles amid the shroud of controversy over the latter's influence in the former's victory in the 2016 election. Oh, and Mr. Trump reportedly couldn't find a hotel to stay at even though because the White House took too long to book rooms in Hamburg. Even if much in the way of policy doesn't get done, this weekend is sure to have its moments of intrigue, political and otherwise.

This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Chris Hannay in Ottawa and Mayaz Alam in Toronto, with James Keller in Vancouver. If you're reading this on the web or someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, you can sign up for Politics Briefing and all Globe newsletters here. Let us know what you think.

CANADIAN HEADLINES

Amid the debate about the Canadian government's settlement with former child soldier Omar Khadr, it appears Mr. Khadr has already received his $10.5-million and promptly cashed it. The quick payout short-circuits an attempt by the widow of a soldier killed by a grenade Mr. Khadr allegedly threw when he was 15 to seek a legal injunction against the payment.

The chief commissioner of the inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls says the investigation is on track despite a wave of recent staff departures.

Indigenous leaders in Northern Ontario are expressing more alarm after four more young people in their communities have taken their own lives. "We're overwhelmed, first of all, and the message that we keep hearing over and over again from our leadership and our front-line workers is that they're exhausted and just trying to keep kids alive," said Nishnawbe Aski Nation Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler.

B.C. MP Peter Julian has dropped out of the NDP leadership race, citing poor fundraising numbers and an inability to see a path to victory with his campaign's resources. Mr. Julian was the first person to officially enter the race but Ontario MPP Jagmeet Singh's candidacy made it difficult for the 13-year veteran of the House to rely solely on his home province as a base according to party insiders.

B.C.'s new NDP government will be sworn on July 18, more than two months after a provincial election that elected a minority government and prompted a confrontation in the legislature. Premier-designate John Horgan will be sworn in along with a cabinet, setting the stage for the legislature to be recalled in the coming months. Mr. Horgan's New Democrats and the third-place Greens teamed up to defeat the Liberals on a confidence vote last week. The new government's early priorities will include campaign finance reform and beginning the shift toward proportional representation.

And the new federal infrastructure bank has a chair: Janice Fukasuka, a former RBC CFO, will head up the newly-formed $35-billion institution that the government hopes will be operational by the end of the year.

Denise Balkissoon (The Globe and Mail) on government and vaccinations: "Government-mandated needles would definitely be drastic, as would keeping students out of school because of their parents' stubbornness. In this age of redebating basic science, it's a less medieval choice than watching a child die of whooping cough."

Margaret Wente (The Globe and Mail) on Omar Khadr: "The case of Omar Khadr versus the government of Canada has been settled. The former child enemy combatant will split $10.5-million with his lawyers, and the government will apologize. The mainstream media and the ruling class are unanimous in their approval. The rule of law has been upheld. Justice has been served. In the rest of the country, the verdict is quite different. The rest of the country thinks this deal stinks."

Howard Anglin (National Post) on the same: "At the time, the specific remedy Khadr sought was repatriation, which the government of the day duly granted. That government believed that Canada had satisfied any outstanding obligations to Khadr when it brought him home to serve the rest of his custodial sentence in Canada. If Khadr was owed further compensation at all, it was from the Americans and not Canadian taxpayers."

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, writing in The Globe, on the Canada-China relationship: "The Trudeau Liberals' inability to defend Canadians' interests raises grave doubts about their competence at the free-trade negotiating table. Before even getting to the table, they have, in fact, been making concessions over the last several months which give the appearance of appeasement."

INTERNATIONAL HEADLINES

"It already feels like an atmosphere of war. All that is required is a spark, like the gunshot in Sarajevo during the First World War," one scholar says of the situation in North Korea. When it reportedly tested its first intercontinental ballistic missile earlier this week, North Korea put many across the world on edge because of the weapon's ability to reach North America. The Globe's Nathan VanderKlippe spoke with experts on the region and they see three potential paths forward: fighting fire with fire, having both the U.S. and North Korea back down on training exercises and tests, and doubling down on sanctions. Also, if you need a breakdown of what's happened so far and how we got to this point we have an explainer on the subject.

France is set to end its coal-powered electricity production by 2022 and will phase out the sale of gas and diesel vehicles by 2040, as the country works to meet its emissions-reductions targets under the Paris climate agreement.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has hired one of the BBC's chief political editors as her director of communications. Not that Robbie Gibb was a stranger to working in politics as well as covering it: he was a staffer for a Conservative MP in the 1990s, and his brother is one of Ms. May's junior cabinet ministers. The move comes as a YouGov poll showed that if an election were held tomorrow, 48 per cent would choose Labour, compared to 38 for the Tories.

And Walter Shaub, the director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, has resigned. Mr. Shaub had repeatedly clashed with the White House over its employees' vast web of conflicts of interest.

The Globe and Mail Editorial Board on Trudeau at the G20: "Mr. Trudeau has positioned himself on the international stage as a sunny cheerleader for the values that Mr. Trump has abandoned. He wants to brand himself as the anti-Trump. Guess what? So do many of his G20 counterparts, from Ms. Merkel to Mr. Macron and Mr. Xi. It's a crowded field, and the other players have more economic clout. Good socks won't make the difference."

Doug Saunders (The Globe and Mail) on Europe's renaissance: "The apparent end of Europe was empowering Putins and Trumps and their lesser local imitators. If the 70-year experiment in international co-operation and free movement and pluralism was failing and leading to misery, then why not try its prewar opposite? And just in the nick of time, Europe has returned. Not subtly or partly, but explosively: For the 500 million citizens of the world's largest economy, 2017 is proving to be the year the European 'lost decade' ended, and the Old World got a new life."

Nina Khrushcheva (The Globe and Mail) on Trump and Putin : "At the root of the affinity between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin is the sense that both are essentially strongmen. But that affinity – and their relationship, whatever it may be – could be what weakens them. Just as Mr. Putin's interventions in the U.S. presidential election have undermined Mr. Trump's presidency, reflected in record-low approval ratings, Mr. Trump's chaotic behaviour has damaged Mr. Putin's position, already undermined by his own economic mismanagement. Mr. Putin must now look over his shoulder even more often for challenges from the street and, perhaps, for challenges from within."

Bret Stephens (New York Times) on the U.S. conservative movement: "It shouldn't be a surprise that a post-literate conservative world should have been so quick to embrace a semi-literate presidential candidate. Nor, in hindsight, is it strange that, having retired the role [William F.] Buckley once played in maintaining conservative ideological hygiene, the ideas he expunged should have made such a quick and pestilential comeback."

Christopher Hope (The Telegraph) on Ms. May's new director of communications: "Theresa May's successful wooing of Robbie Gibb to be the new director of communications at 10 Downing Street is further evidence that the Prime Minister is bedding in for the long term."