A large pall of smoke looms over Grande Prairie, Alta. on Thursday, June 5, 2025.Jesse Boily/The Globe and Mail
Arno Kopecky’s latest book is The Environmentalist‘s Dilemma: Promise and Peril in an Age of Climate Crisis.
Last July, when wildfires torched Jasper, Alta., two kinds of bells sounded for the federal bureaucrats organizing the 2025 G7 Leaders’ Summit in Kananaskis. The first was a typical alarm bell, high and screechy; the second was low and quiet, like the soft bing of an arriving elevator.
“Jasper is right down the road from Kananaskis, so there was a real [sense of] physical threat,” recalls John Kirton, founding director of the G7 Research Group, a University of Toronto-led global network of scholars whose senior members communicate regularly with Ottawa’s summit team. For that team, the prospect of a Jasper-style conflagration bearing down on the leaders of the free world has been a palpable concern all year.
But that danger contained the solution to a related problem: Canada’s Liberal government wanted the G7 to discuss climate change (the host nation sets the summit agenda), but what if Donald Trump was there as President? This was no abstract worry either: the day before Jasper caught fire, Joe Biden had dropped out of the presidential race, and the Democrats’ prospects looked dismal.
“They knew that if they start with the standard stuff on climate change, Donald Trump and his people would get out their red pens and just say ‘no way,’” Mr. Kirton said. “So then, what is your strategy? And wildfires was the answer.”
As this weekend’s summit approached, so did the threats and opportunities. Mr. Trump, of course, won in November, setting up a repeat for the last time he attended a G7 meeting hosted by Canada, at Charlevoix, Que., in 2018, which delivered the famous photograph of a sullen Mr. Trump sitting with his arms crossed, trading glares with German chancellor Angela Merkel.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks with U.S. President Donald Trump during the G7 Summit in Quebec in 2018.Jesco Denzel/The Canadian Press
“If you look at the communiqué from 2018, there’s a separate paragraph that the U.S. wanted on climate change,” recalls Peter Boehm, a man who’s seen Mr. Trump’s capacity to detonate consensus in the flesh. Now a Canadian senator, Mr. Boehm served as a sherpa (the unofficial term for the personal guide each leader brings to these summits) at six G7s, including Charlevoix. “That was a precedent, in terms of not joining consensus.”
Mr. Trump may not care about climate change, but wildfires are a different story. His second term kicked off alongside the catastrophic blaze in Los Angeles, followed by a handful of fires in New York state and North Carolina. In the weeks leading up to this summit, the wildfires exploding across Canada’s boreal forest sent a smoky haze over a third of the United States.
“So Donald Trump’s got a reason to be seen to be doing something about it,” Mr. Kirton said.
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Last weekend, when Prime Minister Mark Carney released the list of priorities he wanted to discuss at the G7, “improving joint responses to wildfires” was right up at the top. Another priority was “building energy security,” a phrase that acquires extra meaning when you consider that wildfires in northern Alberta had interrupted 7 per cent of Canadian oil production while it was being written. Not that there was any mention of oil or gas among the priorities; “fortifying critical mineral supply chains” – materials required for clean energy production – appeared instead.
The wildfire emphasis means leaders will discuss a wide variety of collective protections, from easing the international movements of firefighters, boosting their numbers and improving their equipment, to deploying satellite technology to improve wildfire detection. Money will certainly follow; as Mr. Kirton said, “These summits are great global fundraisers.”
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Mr. Kirton also expects the talk to go beyond simply adapting to a hotter world. “Most people thought it would be a miracle if anything meaningful about climate change would happen at all,” he said of this year’s summit. “But now, with wildfires as the thin edge of the wedge, I think we’re likely to get something” that addresses the root of the climate crisis.
The fact that oil and gas is not on the “energy security” agenda speaks volumes, Mr. Kirton said. Instead there’s artificial intelligence, another priority subject with big climate connotations. AI requires an enormous amount of energy, which could easily (and profitably) be carbon-free if countries make that choice. AI is also great for things like improving the detection of methane leaks from natural gas pipelines. Finally, Mr. Kirton noted that the Kananaskis summit marks the due date for a commitment G7 leaders made in 2016 to put an end to all fossil fuel subsidies by 2025.
It’s hard to imagine bringing that up without triggering a Trumpian glare, or worse. But that appears to be one of the tasks Mr. Carney has set himself this weekend, and no doubt well beyond: Discussing climate change without naming it.