“This will be a successful meeting if Donald Trump doesn’t have an eruption that disrupts the entire gathering. Anything above and beyond that is gravy,” said University of Ottawa international affairs professor Roland Paris, who was foreign policy adviser to Trudeau.
Trump has often mused about annexing Canada and arrives at a time when Carney is threatening reprisals if Washington does not lift tariffs on steel and aluminum.
“The best-case scenario … is that there’s no real blow-ups coming out of the back end,” said Josh Lipsky, the chair of international economics at the Atlantic Council think tank and a former White House and State Department official.
Carney’s office declined to comment on how the Israeli strikes would affect the summit.
Diplomats said Canada has ditched the idea of a traditional comprehensive joint communique and would issue chair summaries instead, in hopes of containing a disaster and maintaining engagement with the US.
A senior Canadian official told reporters Ottawa wanted to focus on actions the seven members, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, could take together.
Canadian Senator Peter Boehm, a veteran former diplomat who acted as Trudeau’s personal representative to the 2018 summit, said he had been told the summit would last longer than usual to give time for bilateral meetings with the US president.
Expected guests for parts of the Sunday to Tuesday event include leaders from Ukraine, Mexico, India, Australia, South Africa, South Korea and Brazil, who all have reasons to want to talk to Trump.
