ABSTRACT

Since its 1976 admission into the G7 club of major industrialized democracies, Canada has regularly acted as an influential member, and leader in several areas of distinct Canadian national advantage, interest and values. These areas include preserving the G7 as an exclusive, effective forum for global governance, extending it to embrace political- security, and Asian issues, and using it to foster multilateral trade liberalization, north- south development, global environmental protection, arms control, and democracy and human rights (notably in South Africa and in regard to the People's Republic of China over the Tienanmien Square incident).

These historic Canadian emphases have coincided well with the interests of Taiwan. Yet the end of the cold war and advent of globalization in the 1990's brought several challenges. In particular, the admission of Russia as virtually a full member of the G7 at the 1997 "Denver Summit of the Eight" reduced Japan's role as the central power in Asia, encouraged some to point to the eventual admission of the PRC into the G7, appeared to lessen the standards applied by the G7 for Russian membership in the WTO, and restricted the G7's ability to deal with its core economic and trade liberalization agenda (including the launch of a new round of multilateral trade liberalization, and taking anticipatory action to ensure the stability of the international financial system). The US initiative to include Russia to such an extent, as compensation for Russian acquiescence in NATO enlargement, also indicated a prevailing American Eurocentric conception of international order.

Although the Canadian government and Prime Minister Chrétien officially supported this enhanced inclusion of the Russians and the emphases at Denver that flowed from it, Canada's G7 diplomacy displayed an essential continuity. Canada remained committed to the core democratic character of the G7, was a full part of the G7 consensus for a strong statement of support for democracy and human rights in Hong Kong, resisted any weakening of WTO accession criteria, and participated actively in the G7 discussions on Asian security. These core elements of Canada's G7 diplomacy are likely to endure in Canada's approach to the 1998 Birmingham Summit, where the Asian currency crisis of autumn 1997 is giving added emphasis to the G7's role in credibly managing the global financial system.