By Rabindra Rooplall in Lima, Peru

FOREIGN Affairs Minister Carl Greenidge said Guyana discussed issues of trade and other Caribbean leaders highlighted security and other issues with Canada during a meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday at the Hilton Hotel in Lima.

In a rushed interview immediately after the meeting, Minister Greenidge told the Guyana Chronicle that Prime Minister Trudeau expressed his commitment to the Caribbean, emphasising the historical links and depths of cooperation between Canada and the Caribbean.

He explained that countries were given the opportunity to intervene and raise topics of common interest on which Caribbean leaders spoke.
Trudeau, in his opening remarks, said the meeting was an opportunity to continue to deepen the friendship between Canada and the Caribbean, as he invited the current and former heads of the regional trade and integration bloc CARICOM to the G7 Summit in Quebec, Canada, in June.

The Group of Seven (G7) is an informal bloc of industrialised democracies—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States—that meets annually to discuss issues such as global economic governance, international security, and energy policy.

“Over the past decade, Canada has always been close in working with our Caribbean friends and partners on a broad range of issues, such as the development of the economy, to a broad range of other issues that have come up recently,” the Canadian Prime Minister said.

He continued: “Whether its [the] issue of climate change, small island states and regions particularly vulnerable to the impact of climate change, to looking at how better we can protect our oceans, to looking at how we can work together as countries with similar approaches and values looking at opportunities for citizens.”

Trudeau said that Canada is the host of the G7 this year and it was important to bring forward leadership from the Caribbean and the next head of CARICOM will be joining the meetings at the G7 confab.

The prime minister noted that it was an opportunity to use Canada’s voice on the world stage to bring forward issues that matter to friends, which is one of the most important things to Canada in its international relations posture.

Trudeau is expected to meet with more than 30 Western Hemisphere countries at the VII Summit of the Americas. Minister Greenidge earlier Friday met with his counterpart as a precursor to the meeting between President David Granger and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in London next week. The Canadian High Commission was opened in Guyana in March 1964. Guyana’s High Commissioner to Canada is also Canada’s Plenipotentiary Representative to CARICOM. The two countries have good bilateral relations, resulting from political ties through the Commonwealth, commercial links, development assistance, and immigration.

The VII Summit of the Americas draws together the leaders of North, Central and South America. The summit’s theme is “Democratic Governance against Corruption”. The political and economic crises in Venezuela are expected to be a dominant theme at the summit. The U.S. and other critics have blasted upcoming elections in Venezuela as a sham. And Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has been barred from attending the summit.

Guyana submitted its application to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) last month, requesting the court to confirm the legal validity and binding effect of the 1899 Arbitral Award regarding the boundary between Guyana and Venezuela. Faced with hyperinflation and an economy in free-fall, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have fled to neighbouring countries such as Colombia. The U.S. has imposed economic sanctions on Venezuelan officials, but has stopped short of blocking oil shipments.

The Summits of the Americas are institutionalised gatherings of the heads of state and government of the Western Hemisphere, where leaders discuss common policy issues, affirm shared values and commit to concerted action at the national and regional levels to address continuing and new challenges faced in the Americas. The Eighth Summit of the Americas is being held on April 13 and 14, 2018 in Lima, Peru.