T7 Canada Communiqué

Think7 (T7), the official engagement group of the Group of Seven (G7), brings together leading think tanks and research centres worldwide to provide evidence-based advice and policy recommendations to the G7 Presidency.

During Canada’s presidency of the G7 in 2025, CIGI is organizing the T7 process, and in early April hosted thought leaders from across the globe at the T7 Summit, to discuss topics within the policy areas of the four T7 task forces: transformative technologies — quantum and AI; digitalization of the global economy; environment, energy and sustainable development; and global peace and security.

We are pleased to announce that the T7 Canada Communiqué is now available, prepared by the task force chairs and co-chairs and distilling the summit discussions and task forces’ work into a set of 13 policy recommendations.

“Days after re-entering the White House, Donald Trump tore up Joe Biden’s directives on the US government’s oversight and use of artificial intelligence (AI). Trump has instead ordered America’s AI industry be fully unleashed. Enormous ripple effects on the technology’s development and its impacts will soon follow. And they may include reshaping the future of war.”

In this commentary, Kyle Hiebert reviews some of the leading AI companies’ recent loosening of the bounds, as well as signals from the White House that the administration will be “hands-off when it comes to upholding the rules of war.” Hiebert says to expect systems to progress and risks to increase as guardrails are dismantled amid competition with China: “Trump’s second presidency has shown he and his America First true believers see little value in restraint — in any form. Expect no less when it comes to military AI.”

National security, Wesley Wark writes, is no longer an earthbound preoccupation. “Space capabilities, especially dual-use functions, constitute critical infrastructure for the functioning of states and global society. The combination of competitive advantage enjoyed by states possessing space assets and the vulnerabilities of those assets to accidental or deliberate disruption defines the national security dimension. Alliances and partnerships are recognized as crucial to achieving national security in space.”

In this new paper, Wark says that Canada, “as a space-faring nation, but not a space great power, represents an interesting case study of space national security needs and challenges, and it also illustrates the potentiality of achieving space national security through alliance efforts, something that will be a necessity for the country.”

“The Trump administration is determined to curb China’s influence in the Western Hemisphere but it is not winning friends as it tries to do so. Given that China has been targeting Latin America for the past two decades, it would be inaccurate to say that China is now seeking to exploit such divisions; it is already South America’s top trading partner and a major source of foreign direct investment, as well as energy and infrastructure lending....But the aggressiveness of the Trump administration has brought the US-China struggle for influence in Latin America out of the shadows and into the light.”

In this opinion, John Ivison writes that “it is clearly beyond time for the Americans to address this strategic neglect in their own backyard.”

In episode 16 of the Policy Prompt podcast, hosts Vass Bednar and Paul Samson talk to Marc Levinson — economist, historian and author of The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, published in 2016, and the follow-up, Outside the Box: How Globalization Changed from Moving Stuff to Spreading Ideas (both Princeton University Press).

Levinson brings to life a topic freighted with importance but often out of mind: how an innovation involving the shipping container, 200 years in the making, transformed economic geography and the transport of cargo around the globe. The three discuss, as well, the current challenges in figuring out the value of international trade that is unpackaged and, so far, not well accounted for — exchange in services, ideas and intangibles, of increasing significance in the global economy.

“As Canadians wake to a new Mark Carney government after the 2025 general election, the reality is stark: North American trade politics have changed. The old assumptions of goodwill, shared interests and special status with Washington are gone. What remains is an arena where power is transactional and loyalty is disposable.”

The Trump administration’s trade war offers a painful but necessary opportunity to reassess, argues Barry Appleton in this opinion. “We must stop the outdated policies of the past and build an adult trading arrangement — one that rewards Canadian contributions while supporting fair prosperity....The future is not a gift — it is a construction project.”