The Speaker of the House of Commons is set to host his Group of Seven counterparts in early September in Ottawa.
The gathering will be the first G7 Lower House Speakers’ meeting for House Speaker Francis Scarpaleggia (Lac-Saint-Louis, Que.) since he was elected to the post on May 26.
The Speaker’s office confirmed to The Hill Times that the summit will take place from Sept. 4-6 in Ottawa. The meetings are intended to bridge parliamentary action to geopolitical issues.
The meeting is the lone event that brings the legislative branch into the Group of Seven proceedings.
The other Lower House Speakers are Yaël Braun-Pivet, president of the French National Assembly; Julia Klöckner, president of the German Bundestag; Lorenzo Fontana, president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies; Fukushiro Nukaga, Speaker of the Japanese House of Representatives; Lindsay Hoyle, Speaker of the United Kingdom House of Commons; Mike Johnson, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives; and Roberta Metsola, president of the European Parliament.
Scarpaleggia has held a series of meetings with G7 ambassadors, including U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra, who posted on X that the two spoke about the upcoming summit.
“As a former Congressman, I really appreciate how valuable these kinds of gatherings are for legislators to connect and collaborate,” Hoekstra wrote on July 18.
Canada’s G7 presidency has been marked by a reduced schedule amid a federal election and the new government of Prime Minister Mark Carney (Nepean, Ont.).
Italy held more than 20 ministerial meetings during its G7 presidency last year. So far, Ottawa has only held two on Canadian soil—a foreign ministers’ meeting in March, and a finance ministers’ and central bankers’ meeting in May. It has also held a handful of other meetings on the sidelines of other events abroad.
Politico Canada reported earlier this month that Canada may add an additional defence ministers’ meeting to its schedule.
The Leaders’ Summit last month in Kananaskis, Alta., was disrupted after U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he would be departing after the first official day of the gathering.
In the end, the summit wrapped with seven joint statements, but none that dealt with the war in Ukraine, which was met with disappointment by the international community. However, Ukraine was addressed in Carney’s chair statement.
The previous G7 Speakers’ summit in Italy ended with a joint statement, which highlighted Ukraine.
“We therefore firmly reiterate our condemnation of Russia’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine, with which we stand in unconditional solidarity,” the Speakers and presidents of G7 Lower Houses declared after a September 2024 meeting in Verona.
The statement also addressed the conflict in the Middle East, as well as critical mineral security, economic growth in Africa and the broader Mediterranean region, and artificial intelligence.
Past Speaker and current Liberal MP Greg Fergus (Hull–Aylmer, Que.) attended the gathering in Italy.
He said in an email that he and Scarpaleggia have discussed the upcoming September summit “at length.”
Canada has held three G7 Speakers’ meetings, including the first one, which was hosted by then-House Speaker Peter Milliken in his hometown of Kingston, Ont., in 2002.
G7 Research Group founder John Kirton, a University of Toronto professor, said the gatherings have evolved over the years.
“In the beginning, they spoke about things that they were immediately responsible for,” he said. “But since then, their agenda has expanded to include a broader range of substantive issues … [such as] the judicial system, democracy, human rights, [and] the rule of law.”
Milliken hosted an additional gathering in Ottawa in 2010. The most recent meeting in Canada was in Halifax, N.S., hosted by then-House Speaker Geoff Regan in 2018.
Kirton said he has advocated for expanding the meetings to include a wide range of parliamentarians, including those on the opposition benches.
He said it is the legislatures that often have to implement and fund the commitments made by the prime ministers and presidents at the Leaders’ Summit. He added that it would be beneficial for parliamentarians to take part in the process before they may have to vote on a piece of implementing legislation.
“It would deepen democracy in the operation of the G7, which was created for the distinctive purpose of protecting at home and promoting abroad open democracy,” he said.
“The legislators are an essential part of that,” Kirton said.
Kirton said the Group of Seven is trailing other organizations when it comes to bringing in parliamentarians, noting the example of NATO, which has an inter-parliamentary group.
“In that sense, the G7 is lagging behind because it is just confined to the Speaker,” he said.
nmoss@hilltimes.com
The Hill Times