Stephen Harper is embarking on a late round of G20 shuttle diplomacy, heading to London and Paris next week to meet two key advocates of the global bank tax that Canada has adamantly opposed.
Mr. Harper's trip will provide his first opportunity to meet with David Cameron since he became Britain's prime minister, and to sound the new leader on his hopes for the G8 and G20 summits that Mr. Harper will host in June.
The two leaders will undoubtedly agree on one point: the desire to push deficit-cutting up the G20 agenda now that Greece's fiscal crisis has raised concerns about a potential next wave of financial instability.
Mr. Cameron has already outlined a pledge to start his own deficit reduction with a 6-billion-pound cut from Britain's budget. Mr. Harper wrote G20 leaders last week warning that they must set out plans for sound budgets to soothe markets that fear national-debt defaults.
Mr. Harper flies from Ottawa to London on Tuesday; on Wednesday, he jets to Paris for a similar quick-stop meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, one of the leading advocates of the bank-tax proposal.
The Canadian Prime Minister last week dispatched his ministers to several capitals to voice opposition to proposals for a global bank tax. A few days later, Mr. Cameron went to meet Mr. Sarkozy, who told reporters that the two leaders "have a common determination to levy the banks as we pledged to do."
The opposition of several countries within the G20 now makes it unlikely that the International Monetary Fund proposals for global banking levies will be accepted at the June summit. Mr. Harper has expressed concern that divisions over a bank tax that leaders don't agree on will distract from progress on more unglamorous but necessary financial reforms, like stronger rules on bank capital and leverage.
Mr. Harper has been sounding out key European G8 and G20 members in advance of the summit. He visited German Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss the summits during a trip to Europe earlier this month, where the two leaders differed over the bank tax proposal.