Canada and France will deepen their defense and industrial cooperation through a new public information security agreement, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said while in Paris on Friday.
Carney announced this in a joint statement with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace.
“Companies in our two countries are doing more together in energy, defense, critical minerals and now in (artificial intelligence),” Carney said.
“What this means is the ability to exchange classified information between our defence, space, artificial intelligence and aviation sectors.”
Macron said he and Carney were discussing trade, defense and security in a closed-door meeting, and praised Canada as a friend of Europe and France.
The meeting, which comes ahead of next week’s G7 summit, may be one of the last meetings between the two world leaders. Macron’s second term is scheduled to end next spring.
France, which is hosting the G7 this year, says priorities for this year’s summit include addressing major geopolitical crises and G7 support for Ukraine.
Senator Peter Bohm, who has served as personal representative for Prime Ministers Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau at six G7 summits, said Carney’s visit with Macron before the summit provides an opportunity for the two leaders to strategize.
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He added that Carney is expected to show “practical diplomacy” at the international event, given how his speech in Davos attracted widespread international attention.
In that speech at the World Economic Forum in January, Carney said the world had entered a perilous new era of great power competition, and Canada was working to expand non-US trade in the face of US President Donald Trump’s trade war.
Boehm said the G7 summit in Evian-les-Bains will be Macron’s tenth and final G7 summit as president.
Macron also said on Friday that he and Carney were discussing how to protect children online, adding that the two countries shared the same goals.
Earlier this year, French lawmakers approved a bill banning the use of social media by children under 15. The idea of setting a minimum age for using these platforms has gained momentum across Europe.
The Liberal government introduced its online safety legislation this week. If passed, it would require social media companies to block access to children under 16, although platforms would be able to get an exemption if they put in place adequate safeguards.
Bill C-34, introduced on Wednesday in the House of Commons, would also regulate the companies behind AI-powered chatbots by imposing a duty on them to act responsibly. This includes measures to reduce the risk of chatbots delivering harmful content and establishing protocols for crisis intervention in situations involving self-harm, suicide or violence.
Macron praised the move on social media on Thursday, saying: “Thank you for joining the movement.”
Looking back at the summit, Boehm said there are always some carry-on items from previous years.
“The discussions in Kananaskis about artificial intelligence, for example, and the global economy will have an impact on the discussions in Evian as well,” he said.
A Canadian government official said this week that there likely won’t be a comprehensive final statement from leaders at the end of the summit.
They expected the assembled leaders to instead make issue-specific statements throughout the event.
Baum said the decision to run several individual ads, rather than a single ad, was likely due to Trump.
“I think that’s a very big factor, because the point of trying to get consensus when what you’re doing is diluting what you have and then you don’t have credibility,” he said, adding that individual statements could address cyber harms, artificial intelligence or many other global issues.
Boom said the broader geopolitical landscape will take into account the summit talks, as the war continues in the Middle East and as the world continues to face the fallout from the Trump administration’s deep cuts to foreign aid.
France is Canada’s third largest export market for goods in the European Union and the fifth largest source of foreign investment.
& Edition 2026 The Canadian Press
