By Promit Mukherjee
BANFF, Alberta (Reuters) -Canada’s finance minister said on Wednesday that he had a good meeting with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and that both were pleased with the progress they were making.
The Canadian finance minister, François-Philippe Champagne, held a bilateral meeting with Bessent on the sidelines of the G7 finance heads conference in Banff, Alberta, which Canada is hosting this year as the rotating chair.
The meeting was being touted as one of the key bilateral discussions at the G7 forum and comes after President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney met earlier this month and agreed to start serious talks on a new relationship.
“We get along very well. We got along very well,” Champagne said. “So we had a lot to discuss. We took the time to discuss a number of issues.” He declined to go into the details of the meeting.
Earlier in the day, Champagne told reporters on the sidelines of the G7 discussions that he would raise the importance of Canada’s deep trading relationship with the U.S. in a discussion with Bessent late on Wednesday.
“We had a very productive G7 discussion. We are both pleased about the progress we are making and the sense of unity of the G7,” Champagne said.
Bessent, when asked by reporters about his meeting with Champagne, said he “had a very productive day.”
Champagne, who is the chair of the G7 finance leaders this year, said the discussions so far in the G7 have been constructive.
“Together (we) have been able to align so to allow the G7 to make progress, which is a good thing,” he said. He also said his bilateral meeting with leaders of the EU was “very constructive.”
Champagne urged the G7 to work together and said the issues of non-market practices by China, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and reconstruction of Ukraine are important topics he would be discussing as the G7 chair.
“If there was one thing that comes out very clearly for me from this G7 is that we are stronger together,” he said.
(Reporting by Promit Mukherjee; additional reporting by Julia Payne and David Lawder; editing by David Lawder, Chris Reese and Leslie Adler)
