Canada must step up: the G7 summit is a defining moment for leadership

  • National Newswatch

This G7 summit will be like no other Canada has hosted.

The world is in turmoil. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to grind on, fuelled by Iranian drones and North Korean shells. In the Middle East, the October 7 Hamas massacre—the deadliest single day for Jews since the Holocaust—forced Israel into a war it did not seek but cannot avoid. The regional landscape has shifted dramatically: Hezbollah has been downgraded by sustained Israeli military pressure, the Assad regime in Syria has collapsed, and Iran’s proxies have been largely neutralized except for the Houthis, who continue to launch Iranian-supplied ballistic missiles at Israeli cities.

The war in Ukraine and the war in the Middle East are not separate crises. They are two sides of the same coin—connected fronts in a struggle between open societies and authoritarian regimes. The outcomes of both conflicts will shape the global order for years to come.

This summit will test whether the world’s leading democracies can still act with strategic clarity and coherence. It will also test whether Canada is ready to lead. For too long, we’ve defaulted to diplomacy-by-consensus: cautious, well-meaning, and ultimately forgettable. That won’t do anymore. Canada must stop managing consensus and start shaping it.

Iran is at the centre of both conflicts. Its regime not only backs Hamas and Hezbollah, but supplies Russia with the drones that terrorize Ukrainian cities. Despite claiming to pursue a civilian nuclear program, Tehran has misled the International Atomic Energy Agency and advanced toward weapons-grade uranium. If left unchecked, Iran could tip the balance in both Europe and the Middle East.

This is the same regime whose terror proxies shattered Israeli and Palestinian lives alike. Yet in much of the West, moral clarity has collapsed into moral equivalence. If Israel’s right to self-defence is delegitimized—if its response to an existential attack is labelled genocide—then NATO’s principle of collective defence becomes hollow. The West cannot afford to abandon Israel any more than it can afford to abandon Ukraine.

This G7 must offer more than platitudes. Prime Minister Mark Carney has an opportunity to move Canada from observer to architect. That means calling for all of the G7 to finally list Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization (Canada and the U.S. currently do so). It means pressing for coordinated sanctions on Iran’s missile and drone networks. And it means reaffirming, unapologetically, that democratic states have the right and duty to defend themselves under international law.

What happens in Kyiv and what happens in Jerusalem are chapters in the same story: authoritarian regimes testing the limits of Western resolve. Our adversaries are watching, and so are our allies. If the West loses its voice now, it may not get another chance to use it.

Canada should also champion a broader “Fortress of Democracies” initiative, deepening defence, intelligence, and technological cooperation among like-minded nations. The G7 must evolve from an economic club into a democratic bulwark, capable of responding to threats that cross borders and operate in grey zones.

Multilateralism without courage becomes theatre. We must stop treating crises in silos (Ukraine, Gaza, Taiwan) and start seeing the broader design. Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea are not acting in isolation. They are learning from one another. The only way to counter them is to show that democracies can learn and act faster.

The world doesn’t need louder leaders. It needs braver ones. If Prime Minister Carney wants to show that Canada is more than a middle power, this is his moment. It will take courage to say what others won’t: that Israel is fighting not just for its survival but for the values we share. That Iranian aggression, whether in the form of missiles or misinformation, must be confronted. And that the age of hedging has ended.

What the world needs from this G7 is not another sprawling communiqué that disappears before the ink dries. It needs a clarion call to action, focused, urgent, and grounded in strategic and moral clarity. This is the moment to confront the forces reshaping our world.

Leadership isn’t volume, it’s vision. And the world is watching to see whether Canada has one.

 

Alan Kessel is a former legal adviser to the Government of Canada and deputy high commissioner of Canada to the United Kingdom. He is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.