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blue-sky (verb)
: to offer ideas that are conceived by unrestrained imagination or optimism.
Hosted by Erin O’Toole, President and Managing Director of ADIT North America. Erin is the former Member of Parliament for Durham and former leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. The Blue Skies political podcast explores issues facing Canada and the world in a format that brings together thought leaders for an informed and engaging conversation.
Hon. Erin OToole (00:01.587)
Welcome to Blue Skies. We live in an age of change, of a great political realignment, geopolitical conflict, trade uncertainty. The world is really an uncertain place. But on June 15th, Canada will welcome the G7. Leaders from some of the most important, powerful countries in the world will descend on Kananaskis, Alberta, and Prime Minister Carney, who will have only been in office
three months at that point. It's remarkable to think about. We'll host the G7, which also happens to be the first G7 Leaders Conference for Trump 2.0, the second term of President Trump. We know how the first term went. We know some of the challenges Canada has faced with 51st state rhetoric in his second term. Prime Minister Carney will not only welcome President Trump, but leaders of the G7 to Canada.
to confront the challenges facing this world in transition. How do these G7 summits work? How are they planned so that the two or three days of meetings and margin meetings and agendas can be set? How do we assess if they're a success or not? Well, we're lucky to be joined by someone who did all that. A Sherpa, not to climb Mount Everest with Hillary, but a Sherpa that guides the leaders and guides the agenda.
of their country to promote dialogue, to help the G7 work, and to promote success for Canada. So today we have a Sherpa turn Senator on blue skies. Welcome Peter Boehm.
Peter Boehm (01:42.784)
Thank you very much, Erin. I'm happy to join you today.
Hon. Erin OToole (01:46.882)
So a little introduction, Peter was born in Kitchener, Ontario, joined the Foreign Service and had assignments in Cuba, Costa Rica, was the ambassador to Germany, served in the political and public affairs role in our Washington embassy, a very critical role for global affairs. He was a deputy minister of global affairs and international development, deputy minister of global foreign affairs, and then has this specialty as a summit organizer in Santiago, Quebec for Summit.
summits of the Americas. He had responsibility for North America leaders summits between 2005 and 2008. And in 2017, Peter was the deputy minister for the last time Canada hosted the G7, the summit as personal representative of Prime Minister Trudeau at that time for the summit that took place in Charlevoix. So Peter, my first question right off the bat is,
How did you get tagged in this Sherpa role? And to the Blue Skies listener, who really is a Sherpa?
Peter Boehm (02:52.265)
Okay, let me, thank you, let me speak to the last of what really is a sherpa. The sherpa term just arose out of the fact that referring to everyone as the personal representative of the president or the prime minister was rather cumbersome.
So they used the summit analogy and said, okay, if the leaders are at the summit, who helps them get there? And that's where the term Sherpa came. I was a bit concerned about that. I did receive messages back in 2017 about cultural appropriation of the term. But then I had a lot of requests from real Sherpas in Nepal who wanted to join me on LinkedIn or on Twitter as it was. So that is the origin of the term.
How one is selected, it depends. Over time and with various prime ministers, it's usually a senior official. It could be someone in the foreign affairs area. It could be someone in the privy council office. It could be someone in the PMO as it was for Mr. Mulroney at one point. He also had Sylvia Ostry, the deputy trade minister at the time. it...
It really depends, but the important thing is that you have to have a good connection to the leader because at the end of the day, it's the leader plus one and you are the plus one. So I've had the good fortune and honor to have been the Sherpa for Prime Minister Harper three times and for Prime Minister Trudeau as well three times. So I like to tout my ambidexterity in the Senate.
Hon. Erin OToole (04:31.969)
And because you are that personal represent representative as you said With the g7 when Canada hosts it talk us through how the lead Sherpa I guess Is the agenda set by you? engaging with the personal representatives of the other six leaders that will attend and when you host
Are you really the lead Sherpa of that group? And so the agenda for Kananaskis will be set by Canada Sherpas. Walk us through that, or is it completely a collaboration each time and it really doesn't matter who's hosting it.
Peter Boehm (05:11.932)
It's a little bit of everything. There are legacy items that come from previous summits and over the years there have been various initiatives put forward by individual members and we can get into Canadian initiatives later on if you wish. And then usually a leader will set out his or her initiatives, the things that they would like to see, that is often connected with travel, international travel, to meet
other leaders before the event. Certainly the Sherpa would have been on the road before. In my case for 2018, the last time we hosted at Charleboix, I visited all the capitals. And then there are the Sherpa meetings, which occur before, and they can take place in different parts of the country. So for example, the current Sherpa, Cindy Termorshuizen, had a
had meetings in Halifax and in Ottawa and in Vancouver. And I did something similar across the country as well. It is different, of course, when you are the presiding country and when you are hosting, because there are also ministerial meetings. And there have been already, was in La Malibé, in Charlevoix, there was a foreign ministers meeting where former foreign minister Melanie Joly hosted her counterparts. And then more recently in Banff,
François-Philippe Champagne, the finance minister, also hosted his colleagues and they feed in to the leaders agenda as do the Sherpa meetings and then there are these legacy items and then there might be simply events that take place. There could be a natural disaster, there could be a war and or there could be a financial mess as there was in 2008-2009 with the
sovereign debt crisis, where the agenda essentially gets hijacked. In the meantime, underneath this, if you look at this as an iceberg and the summit is the peak of the iceberg, below the waterline, there are many, many working groups that are meeting on initiatives that started, whether it's counterterrorism in the post 9-11 climate, and that still exists. There's the Financial Action Task Force on money laundering.
So there's a lot that's going on, in terms of preparation, and it's up to the Sherpa then to brief the Prime Minister, get guidance, and there's one more dimension, of course, and that's the organizational logistics aspect. So there has to be a summit management office that then looks at, once the site of the summit itself has been chosen, how to handle this with local authorities, accommodation.
security with the RCMP, with local police forces. So it turns into quite a large event,
Hon. Erin OToole (08:13.193)
Yeah, no, it is massive. And of course, not just the agenda, the logistical concerns and security, it's like holding a mini Olympics in Kananaskis with multiple countries, multiple delegations.
Peter Boehm (08:25.48)
Absolutely, and there are no medals for the Sherpas after.
Hon. Erin OToole (08:31.233)
Well, maybe the Senate, but we can talk about that later. Charlevoix in 2018, as the lead Sherpa for that, how did you approach setting the agenda? Obviously, that was coming at a challenging time when in the first Trump administration, was a disruption on trade, there was renegotiation of NAFTA. So certainly,
the North American two in the G7 were already having issues. And I loved reading a quote from you on Charlevoix. You at one point said, quote, Trump did not torpedo our summit, but it was close, end quote. What was the agenda for Charlevoix? How was that set at the time in 2018? And leaving aside Trump's departure tweets on the plane, we'll talk about that in a minute.
Were you happy with how Charlevoix turned out despite all the challenging circumstances of the president and the exchanges after?
Peter Boehm (09:38.524)
Well, I was, I was happy. We had a very substantive agenda and we had an earlier opportunity the year before to observe President Trump and his team in Taramina in Sicily at the Italian summit. The Italians follow us in the rotation. And interestingly, Taramina is where the second season of the White Lotus is set for those people who watch that program.
And so we knew there would be some legacy items. We knew there were a few things where the US administration was going to change its posture. The Paris Agreement on climate change is a good example of that because at that point in Sicily, they had not yet removed themselves from the agreement. That came later. And even though there, Mr. Trump being new, was in listening mode, we had a pretty good idea.
And then I had a very good idea on who to speak with when I went down to Washington to the White House. My problem was that many of the individuals that I dealt with and established relationships with were either fired or resigned. So there was a bit of a rotation on the senior official side in the White House and we had to be ready for that. The other point I would like to make, and I think it's an important one,
is that Mr. Trudeau had the luxury of a majority government. You'll remember all of that, Erin, of course. yeah, so and that allowed for a little bit of planning on the part of the the prime minister in terms of setting out the agenda that he wanted to see. that gave me my marching orders without fear of too much political distraction at the time. In contrast to today, where
there has been a very compressed period in which to work. You mentioned that Prime Minister Carney has only been in office for three months. Well, of course, he had a predecessor who I think had been hoping to be the host at at Kananaskis and it didn't work out that way for him. So there was a lot a lot to do. We had a number of signature initiatives for Charlevoix and one was on
ocean plastics and that's where other leaders were invited to join on the last day. There was some on the economic side as well. There were some some developments there that we had wanted to to push and then the big ticket item was to establish a fund for girls and women's education in conflict zones and that really was a spectacular success.
We wanted to raise 400 billion and we got to 3.2 billion with the 400 million, should say, and 3.2 billion with the World Bank kicking in. So there were all of those things. then there was, those were standalones. And then there was the negotiation of the communique. And that was difficult. And that's where we did the Sherpas, two all-nighters, and at the end of the day had to go to the leaders for some help on the final language. And those were references to the rules-based.
international order and the famous photo of Angela Merkel staring down Donald Trump, at least that's what it looks like. Of course, it had been framed by her photographer to make sure that Justin Trudeau's head and mine were not there because we were very much in the foreground. It makes it look like it was a very, very serious conversation, which it was up to up to one point. But the Americans did not want to agree on the phrase the rules based international order.
even though it was the United States that established the rules-based international order, with some good help from us, by the way. So that's that kept us going and the following year... Go ahead.
Hon. Erin OToole (13:40.812)
Well, let me jump in there for a second because I'm glad I was going to raise that iconic photo that you mentioned and to put this into context for people that maybe the amazing Mackensie can edit this in post and put the photo up. But I use this in some of my geopolitical talks and addresses now just to say the one constant in that photo today now is Donald Trump. know, he's seated and you can actually see Angela Merkel
leaning in, you see Macron, who is now termed out, he's in the final term of his presidency. You see Shinzo Abe, who sadly left office and then was assassinated. And I often highlight John Bolton, who I know you had a lot of good exchanges with at Charleroix, but Bolton was one of kind of along with the generals that were in the office of Trump in the first administration.
were kind of the institutional memory that was keeping him within the guardrails a little bit. Now John Bolton needs his own personal security because he's been written out of the sort of MAGA crowd. Talk for a moment just that clash of leaders that were still functioning in the traditional system that the Americans set up.
and facing down a president who seemed determined to throw it out the window and not just on trade, on security. know, Trump was threatening at that point to pull out of NATO. Macron had declared it to be NATO was brain dead. Just talk about that clash and how you would have worked as Sherpa with officials like John Bolton, the national security advisor, to try and get the president into some sort of collaborative language.
Peter Boehm (15:27.649)
Yeah.
Peter Boehm (15:31.918)
The problem that we had, well first of all, you're absolutely right, Erin, that these individuals, they were actually, I could say they were physical guardrails in some ways. And John Bolton only came into the picture later. The Sherpa at the time was a rank below both Bolton and Larry Kudlow, who had been chairing the National Economic Council.
And they had come to the game rather late, in fact, on site. So we had a lot of consensual agreement on initiatives and on language. And they sort of upended it. That is not unusual because I recall when Barack Obama was president, for the US, the G7, it's basically another meeting. For us, it's very, very significant. So they only focus on it in their interagency consultations closer
to the date. So all of this planning at the end of the day can be turned over, can be amended and changed. And so what led to the photo was really a rather sharp discussion that John Bolton and I were having about the rules-based international order. That sit down came at the end. said to Prime Minister Trudeau, said, we can't release the communique yet. We have this thing that we've been working on all night.
Hon. Erin OToole (16:45.973)
Okay.
Peter Boehm (16:58.263)
It's got to come to the leaders to fix it or to work out some sort of a compromise. when, and then Mr. Trump, wanted to leave, he was very focused on his next summit, which was with Kim Jong-un, the dictator of North Korea in Singapore a few days later. He wanted to actually leave the event before the discussion on climate change. So I suspect that was a bit strategic.
The leaders then sat down, it was at the end of a luncheon of the Gender Equality Advisory Council, which had also been set up. And Mr. Trump simply sat down, crossed his arms and he said, all right, let's do it. And Bolton said, well, the problem is that we don't understand what the rules-based international order means, what is it? And then I made my spiel, well, come on, you guys.
Peter Boehm (17:52.216)
You guys established it, we helped, then Trump rubbed his hands and said, game on, guys. And then everyone got involved. I know Angela Merkel quite well from my time as ambassador to Germany. And she immediately came in and said, I can find the words, Peter, and all of this. And then Theresa May, who was a bit bruised, the British prime minister, because the previous evening,
Mr. Trump had lamented the fact that Vladimir was not present with us, meaning Putin, and some British citizens had just been killed by the Russian secret service with the Novichok poison in Salisbury. So there were all of these tensions that were there. And then we finally worked out a compromise where we refer to a rules-based international order. Always go for the indefinite article when you're in doubt.
And then in the rest of the text, appeared as the rules-based international order. So maybe a Pyrrhic victory for us. I don't know. But that's how that went. And also, the US had some exceptionalism. They wanted their own paragraph in the communique on climate change. They would not join the consensus that we had forged.
they were very particular about how Iran was being referenced and particularly the JCPOA this agreement that they of course wanted to get out of so we had a sleight of hand there and referred to a United Nations Security Council resolution so boiling it down it probably makes more sense and we'll see what comes out of Canon ask us to have individual statements on certain issues so one on Ukraine
President Zelensky is going to be at the summit, one on the global economy, one on whatever, rather than negotiating all night on a communique to find a common denominator that then becomes the lowest common denominator and is not convincing to our publics and certainly not to the media.
Hon. Erin OToole (20:06.163)
Okay, another thing, thank you. Another thing that people often wonder about is funding initiatives. You mentioned that funding initiative for education of women and girls in conflict zones. I think probably some of my listeners would remember the Muskoka Initiative for Child and Maternal Health from when I was part of the Harper government. Are those also advanced by Sherpas? So of course, you're not waiting to the meeting.
to say, yeah, you all have to pony up X dollars for this initiative. is that sort of, like that was viewed as Harper's initiative. Is there always a signature funding initiative for each G7 host?
Peter Boehm (20:47.619)
Not always, it depends really what they want to do. So the summits in 2008, 2009 were almost exclusively focused on the international sovereign debt crisis. And Mr. Carney will remember that very well because he was governor of the Bank of Canada at that time. The Maternal Newborn Child Health Initiative out of Muskoka, remembering that was still the G8 at that point.
Peter Boehm (21:15.656)
was very much Mr. Harper's signature initiative. And it had to be seeded early with, I was happily sitting in Berlin, so I missed that, but by the Sherpa, and then probably followed up with some phone calls by the prime minister. And I know that was in fact the case. And that initiative is still going. So it's, you know, there are a number of initiatives.
Hon. Erin OToole (21:40.522)
Yeah.
Peter Boehm (21:43.521)
that started at one point and they continue. And leaders of various countries can claim some credit.
Hon. Erin OToole (21:54.06)
Yeah, no, in fact, when I was at the UN as foreign affairs critic, people were still praising the impact of relatively modest investments in terms of lifelong quality of health improvements in impoverished parts of the world. Any idea if there's going to be any of these initiatives? And maybe let's transition now into Kananaskis on
Trying to do research on what the priorities are is pretty hard. The government's communique says, building communities that benefit everyone fighting climate change and managing rapidly evolving technologies. Obviously very broad headings. Any insight? I know there are some discussions. Of course, President Zelensky has been invited by Prime Minister Carney. So the situation, the war in Ukraine will be part of it. There's been...
various initiatives on AI. There's, I think, quantum infusion working groups. Do you have any sense on what really the objectives will be and what Canada's goals may be for Kananaskis at this critical turning point in history?
Peter Boehm (23:10.69)
Well, I'm not in the inner circle. I'm sometimes asked for a little bit of advice. So I really don't know. But what I do know is certainly if you look at the statements that came out of both, and especially the finance minister's meeting, but also the foreign minister's meeting, there are various things to pull out there. First of all, AI. And that's a consistent theme. We had a standalone statement on AI in 2018, in fact.
about the regulatory aspect and that's only become more intense and I think the Sherpas, I know the Sherpas have been working on that. Ukraine is obviously a separate issue. I imagine, Erin, we're gonna get into tariffs a little bit later, but certainly the global economy is always front and center.
and some of the language that came out of Banff in terms of downside risks and the like, that will be there. And that is something that the chair of the meeting probably knows better than anyone else around the table. So has an advantage having worked with for two different countries in that capacity.
Also, and this is a kind of a sleight of hand thing, the G7, someone once said it's like the steering committee for the world. It's not, but it is significant and so is the G20. Now, the G20 is not like-minded given its membership, but South Africa is hosting the G20 summit in the fall. And there should be some crosswalks between G7 and G20, which is
reason why the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, has been invited to Kananaskis. So that's kind of an important thing, this bridge, against the backdrop of the strained relationship between South Africa and the United States. So there's yet another moment for Canada to do some bridge building if we want to.
Hon. Erin OToole (25:18.912)
Yeah.
Hon. Erin OToole (25:23.137)
Out of all the various Oval Office press conferences, think Prime Minister Carney emerged the most unscathed and the South African president, of course, President Zelensky, was the most historic in terms of a open bickering and fighting in the Oval Office. It was quite strange. We could have a whole show because, of course, South Africa is part of the BRICS alliance, which is kind of arriving.
to the G7. But let's quickly focus in on tariffs, because you mentioned it, I did want to raise it. How is this addressed at the G7? Because it does look like President Trump is pushing for bilateral deals. So Keir Starmer has already secured for the United Kingdom a bilateral deal of sorts on tariffs. I'm sure he still like to change it, because it has its challenges.
Peter Boehm (26:19.343)
It's a very small deal, that one.
Hon. Erin OToole (26:21.289)
Yes. Well, and I've been told by well-placed sources that Prime Minister Carney and his team have made significant headway on a potential bilateral or maybe trilateral, in the case of Mexico, step back of tariffs. How can the G7 tackle this one when Trump has been disrupting trade and actually inviting everyone to do bilaterals with the White House?
Is there a sense that, you know, Japan, the European players and Canada can use the G7 to talk the president away from this global trade disruption? What's your sense?
Peter Boehm (27:06.003)
Well, I think that's the key theme. And it's one that will surface in bilateral meetings probably at various informal encounters. Aaron, know these terms, have a sit down bilateral, you can have a pull aside, you can have a brush by or a bump into, and they're all planned and you can have discussions. My own view is that at Kananaskis there will be more requests for bilateral meetings than probably at any
summit so they're the organizers I hope have built in that time. Certainly leaders will want to have one-on-ones with the with the host and with the chair. Absolutely certainly they will want this with with Trump as well and of course there are some new leaders who will who will be present. Friedrich Merz of Germany was just in the ran the gauntlet in the Oval Office yesterday so
It's all of that. In the past, tariffs have really been looked at more in the context of the World Trade Organization. And no one is talking about the WTO. It's always been very important for us. And the appellate body has been more abundant because of the United States across several administrations. So not just Trump. That's correct.
Hon. Erin OToole (28:21.557)
They've not been appointing adjudicators, right? So they've let the WTO become basically a neutered organization.
Peter Boehm (28:29.212)
That's right, so there's no real functioning appeal process on a panel or a panel review. And of course, there's no trade round. So if, for example, out of canonascus, they can say we're going to stimulate another trade round to replace the doha round, which died, then maybe that would be some sort of an accomplishment. But if you look back at previous communicates, there's always positive language about.
Trade liberalization and dropping non-tariff barriers and then suddenly we find ourselves in this situation where the tariff issue is so closely Allied to global economic contraction and the first theme that the leaders will always discuss is the state of the global economy and usually the chair kicks it off right to the US president and we did that in in 2018 where
Mr. Trump was given the opportunity to talk about his tax cut. No doubt he'll want to talk about his bold, beautiful bill this time around as well. So hard to say how that discussion is going to go and how, frankly, to keep it on the rails and if you still want to demonstrate some G7 unity at the end of the day. And I think that is going to be.
The big challenge of the summit, you've got some new actors. Merz is new, although I knew him during my time in Germany. He has a very positive view of Canada, speaks French, the whole gamut. The Japanese prime minister is new. Prime Minister Meloni of Italy has been characterized as a Trump whisperer. So was Justin Trudeau the first few months of them, that all changed. So.
I really don't think there is a Trump whisper. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, is a known factor. This will be Prime Minister Stammer's first crack because it was Prime Minister Sunak who was at the last summit in Italy. So a lot of new actors sort of listening, vying for position. And of course, for President Trump, he's been to several of these. He prefers bilateral talks. He's not a big fan of multilateralism.
Peter Boehm (30:49.117)
I've seen him, it loses interest, I've written about that. So this is going to be the challenge for a fairly new Canadian government and also for a chair who has a wealth of international experience, has been at these meetings before, but never as the leader. So stay tuned.
Hon. Erin OToole (31:10.483)
Yeah. A quick word. Yeah, no, that'll be the interesting one. Will there be another photo like Charlevoix, but with Mark Carney in the middle? I'm sure his photographer, I'm not sure who that is, will be trying to get the same sort of shot that Merkel's got. But let's, a quick couple of words maybe on security, Peter, because one thing I've been quite public in how impressed I've been with talk on national defense, on Arctic sovereignty.
by Prime Minister Carney, certainly a lot of policies I've advocated for. So I've said to my friends, if I advocated for it, I've got to praise it when he does it. That's how our democracy works. Sometimes you raise the issue, you may not get to actually fund it, but when someone does, know, the democracy is working, right? It's not all about you, it's about the country. Do you think that Prime Minister Carney, especially with President Zelensky,
in attendance for some of the meetings will bring up security, will bring up a reinvigorated NATO, perhaps even collaboration between some of the NATO players in the Arctic. Do you think security actually might get a amount of attention than in previous years?
Peter Boehm (32:31.069)
I think that's entirely possible. I suspect it would be more in a bilateral context and then the Ukraine example, separate statement on Ukraine, as you said, Erin. But we have to remember Japan is not part of and there's going to, although they're allied country, and there's going to be a NATO summit in The Hague about 10 days later. And before that, the Prime Minister is having a
Canada EU Summit in Brussels. So there are a number of strands there. My own view, I'm very interested in the Arctic and participated in our National Defense Committee's trip to the Arctic and our study two years ago. With the addition of Finland and Sweden to the alliance, all
The members, with the exception of the Russian Federation of the Arctic Council, are in fact NATO members. Previous government looked and pushed hard on NORAD renewal and committed budgetary resources to that. And the question that exists, at least in my mind, is how do you make some dotted lines between what NORAD is doing and NATO in terms of the Arctic dimension?
recognizing that with climate change, the waterways become more navigable. There's greater interest by China in its near Arctic nation posture. So there's a lot that can be discussed there. And it wasn't lost on me, two things. On his first trip, the prime minister went to Paris and London, but then he came and went straight to Iqaluit as well. And in the speech from the throne, there was explicit recognition.
of the three peoples of founding peoples of Canada and of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and how that would inform our legislation going forward. And you'll recall there was a big debate on that a couple of years ago. So I think there's a lot there to be said on defense. And since it looks like there's going to be a request for a three and a half percent increase in
spending in terms of hardware and one and a half for infrastructure, that's five percent. That's a lot of money that has to be set aside.
Hon. Erin OToole (35:02.933)
Beyond my wildest dreams, when I used to say we needed to make two, 2.5, that now seems passe. It's crazy how much the world has changed. Look, I'd like to, this has been a fascinating conversation and I wanna start to wrap it up. So a couple of things, if you could be sharpening again for Mark Carney, at least on the purposes of the blue skies.
What do you think one objective that Canada should try and position for, you know, what should one of the top priorities be for Canada to get out of this summit?
Peter Boehm (35:47.594)
I think number one, mean, I'm biased. So I really think the G7 is for us, our membership is a jewel in the crown of our foreign policy. And we are given the price of oil on any given day, either the eighth or ninth largest economy.
This will be the 50th summit. And I've been frequently asked, OK, what's the value of the G7? Why have it anyway? Well, if it was valueless, then leaders would not be wanting to come. And it is this forum that provides informal discussion opportunities. Not everything is scripted. And that is an important element. So number one.
Peter Boehm (36:34.646)
If the prime minister can show that there is some G7 solidarity and that he will be passing a torch onwards to France for next year, that will be an accomplishment. If he can, behind the scenes, ensure that there's some movement in terms of calming.
markets perhaps showing that that solidarity recognizing that President Trump doesn't really want to move away from his big dutiful tariff word and its execution then That is another example. We haven't talked about Mexico Erin, but I don't know whether President Scheinbaum is Is coming or not. I was honoured to be the Canada's representative at her inauguration
Peter Boehm (37:27.769)
We talked about that Canada. It's Canada's turn to host the three amigos as it were and I don't know if that's going to happen anytime soon, but if she does come there's a chance to step aside and be with President Trump and say, okay, CUSMA NAFTA 2.0. What are we going to do about this? So there are a lot of I use the term a lot the known the known unknowns and those are a few of them but
showing durability of this informal organization that is the G7 and by the same token, Canadian leadership. Because for us, we do have a multilateral vocation coming from our history, whether it's in the establishment of the UN, the establishment of NATO, other initiatives throughout the world. And for us, that's a pretty good counterweight and offset to our overwhelming bilateral relationship with the United States.
Hon. Erin OToole (38:22.702)
Well said. So maybe demonstrating the importance of multilateral dialogue like the G7 and a few whispers at the margins to tone down the rhetoric on tariffs in North America. Some of these goals may not be public because of what happens at the margins and things isn't, but a good opportunity for Canada's prime minister to make an impact. Look, Peter, this has been fascinating and I joked about
gold medal of the Senate afterwards. I can't think of a more distinguished and more experienced person from a foreign affairs angle that could be in the Senate. Your appointment in 2018 was a very good one. And I think the fact that you now chair the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, having the former... Well, let's get that...
Peter Boehm (39:13.684)
I did. I did. It's not been reconstituted yet.
Hon. Erin OToole (39:18.769)
Let's get that back going. You know, to just tap your corporate memory and your international relationships is such a value for Parliament. Upper House, lower House doesn't matter. So as we close, this is Blue Skies. I try not to be partisan. I try to make this a very substantive conversation and an optimistic sort of approach to discussing public policy dialogue. From Sherpa to Senator, tell me one memory you have.
Peter Boehm (39:19.864)
Yeah.
Hon. Erin OToole (39:48.167)
of your public service, as one of our diplomats or as a senator, that when you retire at 75 in one day, you can look back and say, I'm really proud of that.
Peter Boehm (40:05.056)
Well, it almost sounds maudlin and trite. it was Prime Minister Chrétien who came up to me not so long ago and said, Peter, you you were a great diplomat. Why on earth? He didn't say why on earth, but he said, why did you ever want to become a senator? And I said, well, I felt I had a bit of gas left in the tank, Mr. Chrétien, that I wanted to give back. And I enjoy what I
what I do and he said, you know, you're so passe, these days you have to say you've got some electricity in the battery. And I thought, okay, touche. So I enjoy that aspect and I do like public policy and I feel that we are at a very important juncture right now in how we conduct our public policy and how we act on the international stage.
Hon. Erin OToole (41:04.235)
Well said. From Sherpa to Senator, somebody that's helping recharge our parliamentary batteries in terms of informed, respectful, and critically important debates for Canada at this time. Peter, thank you very much for blue-skying the upcoming G7 meetings at Canada's with us today.
Thank you very much, Erin. Always a pleasure to speak with you and I hope to see you soon.