14th G7 summit

The 14th G7 Summit was held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada between June 19 and 21, 1988. The venue for the summit meetings was the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in Downtown Toronto.[1]

14th G7 summit
Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Front Street entrance
Host countryCanada
DatesJune 19–20, 1988
Venue(s)Metro Toronto Convention Centre
CitiesToronto, Ontario
Follows13th G7 summit
Precedes15th G7 summit

The Group of Seven (G7) was an unofficial forum which brought together the heads of the richest industrialized countries: France, West Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada (since 1976)[2] and the President of the European Commission (starting officially in 1981).[3] The summits were not meant to be linked formally with wider international institutions; and in fact, a mild rebellion against the stiff formality of other international meetings was a part of the genesis of cooperation between France's President Giscard d'Estaing and West Germany's Chancellor Helmut Schmidt as they conceived the first Group of Six (G6) summit in 1975.[4]

Unlike the relatively low key summit at Château Montebello in 1981, the Toronto summit was held under tight security with involvement of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Metro Toronto Police.

Canada was the first member of the G7 or G8 to host both this kind of Summit and an Olympic Games in the same calendar year. In February, Calgary, Alberta, hosted the 1988 Winter Olympics. Canada would do this again 22 years later when they hosted the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia and then the 36th G8 summit and the 4th G20 summit in Huntsville, Ontario and Toronto respectively.

Leaders at the summit
Summit leaders at the University of Toronto: (left to right) Jacques Delors, Ciriaco De Mita, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Brian Mulroney, François Mitterrand, Helmut Kohl and Noboru Takeshita.

The G7 is an unofficial annual forum for the leaders of Canada, the European Commission, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.[3]

The 14th G7 summit was the first summit for Italian Prime Minister Ciriaco De Mita and was the last summit for U.S. President Ronald Reagan.[5] It was also the first and only summit for Japanese Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita.

Participants

These summit participants are the current "core members" of the international forum:[6][1][7]

Core G7 members
Host state and leader are shown in bold text.
Member Represented by Title
Canada Brian Mulroney Prime Minister
France François Mitterrand President
West Germany Helmut Kohl Chancellor
Italy Ciriaco De Mita Prime Minister
Japan Noboru Takeshita Prime Minister
United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher Prime Minister
United States Ronald Reagan President
European Community Jacques Delors Commission President
Helmut Kohl Council President

Issues

The summit was intended as a venue for resolving differences among its members. As a practical matter, the summit was also conceived as an opportunity for its members to give each other mutual encouragement in the face of difficult economic decisions.[4] Issues which were discussed at this summit included:

  • International Economic Policy Cooperation
  • Multilateral Trading System / Uruguay Round
  • Newly Industrialized Economies
  • Developing Countries and Debt
  • Environment
  • Future Summits
  • Other Issues
  • Annex on Structural Reform

Criticism

The Toronto-based Canadian Organization for the Rights of Prostitutes issued a number of press releases leading up to the economic summit pointing out that the local vice squads were tasked with cleaning up the city streets through a coordinated crackdown on sex workers.[8] This crackdown and economic summit took place in Toronto amidst the tumultuous restructuring of the Canadian Criminal Code to outlaw commercial sex by criminalizing communication for the purpose of obtaining commercial sexual services in public.[9] Similar crackdowns against other street-involved communities (drug users, the homeless, gays and lesbians, transgender people) continue today in the lead up to large economic summits like the G7, IMF, World Bank as well as sporting events like the World Cup, the Olympics, and Formula One.[10][11][12][13]

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See also
  • G8
  • 2010 G-20 Toronto summit

Notes
  1. Japan, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA): Summit Meetings in the Past.. Accessed 2009-03-11. Archived 2009-04-30.
  2. Saunders, Doug. "Weight of the world too heavy for G8 shoulders," Archived 2009-04-29 at WebCite Globe and Mail (Toronto). July 5, 2008 -- n.b., the G7 becomes the Group of Eight (G7) with the inclusion of Russia starting in 1997.
  3. Reuters: "Factbox: The Group of Eight: what is it?", July 3, 2008.
  4. Reinalda, Bob; Verbeek, Bertjan (1998). Autonomous Policy Making by International Organizations. p. 205. ISBN 9780203450857.
  5. Kurtaman, Joel. "Business Forum: Reagan's Final Summit Conference; The Forecast Is for All Talk, No Action," New York Times. June 19, 1988.
  6. Rieffel, Lex. "Regional Voices in Global Governance: Looking to 2010 (Part IV)," Archived June 3, 2010, at the Wayback Machine Brookings. March 27, 2009; "core" members (Muskoka 2010 G-8, official site). Archived June 2, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  7. MOFA: Summit (14); European Union: "EU and the G8" Archived 2007-02-26 at the Wayback Machine
  8. "Prostitution Crack Down - CORP Press Release · AIDS Activist History Project". aidsactivisthistory.omeka.net. Retrieved 2018-10-28.
  9. "The Case Against C-49 - CORP Position Statement · AIDS Activist History Project". aidsactivisthistory.omeka.net. Retrieved 2018-10-28.
  10. "How the Olympic clean-up put sex workers in danger". The Independent. Retrieved 2018-10-28.
  11. Hyslop, Lucy (2010-02-03). "Winter Olympics on slippery slope after Vancouver crackdown on homeless". the Guardian. Retrieved 2018-10-28.
  12. "Resisting the Olympic cleanup". Xtra. 2009-12-29. Retrieved 2018-10-28.
  13. "Montreal Police Cracked Down Hard on F1 Sex Tourism". Vice. 2015-06-19. Retrieved 2018-10-28.

References
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