A National Circus: The Kananaskis 2025 – A G7 Summit in a Discursive Killbox

Introduction

The 2025 G7 Leaders’ Summit in Kananaskis, Alberta was billed as a celebration of “unity” on the forum’s 50th anniversary. In practice, it became a discursive killbox – a hermetically-sealed stage where leaders performed sovereignty and transparency while actively undermining both. Behind lofty slogans about “protecting our communities” and “shared prosperity,” Canada’s presidency orchestrated a spectacle of democratic decay: access-to-information rights were smothered, protest and press freedoms were corralled into distant zones, and even basic disability accommodations fell by the wayside. All the while, substantive failures piled high – from President Donald Trump’s petulant early exit to mass protests dogging India’s Narendra Modi, from “climate leadership” posturing belied by fossil fuel indulgence to enthusiastic hype of AI as a convenient distraction. This Operation Recursive Enema dossier tears down the summit’s visual and rhetorical branding, exposing it as a parody of state insecurity. The following analysis, laden with evidence and satire, documents how the Kananaskis G7 collapsed any pretense of democratic legitimacy into a closed-loop of performative diplomacy.

The Stage-Managed Summit vs. the Suppression of Dissent

Officially, the G7 Summit presented itself as open and principled – Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney declared the meeting a time to “protect our citizens, defend our values and deliver real solutions.” In reality, Kananaskis was transformed into a fortified theater where public scrutiny was all but banished. A “wide swath of the wilderness” around the resort was sealed off by security, with a no-fly zone overhead and a massive deployment of RCMP, military, and police from across Canada. This remote mountain venue – marketed with images of serene lodgepole pines and Rockies majesty – served to physically isolate leaders from the people they claim to represent. The summit’s own logo, featuring a lone pine tree with seven branches against a stylized mountain, unintentionally symbolized how seven leaders stood aloof on a mountaintop, literally and figuratively above the fray.

Meanwhile, any civil society presence was tightly controlled. Authorities designated just three official protest zones in Calgary’s downtown and a distant parking lot in Banff, far from the summit site. Demonstrators were explicitly urged by police to remain in these penned-in areas “rather than risk arrest” elsewhere. In effect, freedom of assembly was geographically quarantined. The theatre of “engagement” existed, but only behind figurative one-way glass: leaders could gesture toward the concepts of democracy and transparency while ensuring that inconvenient voices remained out of earshot. As one protest organizer in Calgary quipped, they hoped their rallies – livestreamed into the secure zone – might “ambush [Modi] for the next 48 hours” by forcing leaders to actually notice dissent. But the summit’s stage managers had done everything to prevent any such ambush.

Crucially, this containment extended to information itself. Journalists operated from an International Media Centre in Banff, 50 km away, receiving sanitized briefings. Access to leaders was as rarefied as the mountain air. And behind the scenes, Canadian institutions were actively monitoring and constraining information flow. In the weeks around the summit, a Calgary-based private intelligence firm, ourselves Prime Rogue Inc actually, observed a surge of stealth traffic from government servers – evidence that federal agencies were scraping websites and hoarding metadata to pre-empt unflattering revelations. Far from exemplifying openness, Ottawa’s reflex was to treat information as a threat to be neutralized. In short, the G7 in Kananaskis operated as a discursive killbox: a controlled environment where the appearance of sovereign deliberation was maintained at gunpoint (sometimes literally), and where “transparency” was reduced to a stage prop.

Exit Stage Right: Trump’s Early Departure and the Farce of Unity

Nothing illustrated the summit’s collapsing credibility better than Donald Trump’s abrupt exit. Mid-way through the conference, the U.S. President bailed out and flew home, skipping the final day’s meetings on Ukraine and trade issues. Trump’s one-liner to justify leaving – “I have to be back, very important” – rang hollow. Ostensibly he cited an escalating crisis (an Israel-Iran military flare-up) as the reason, but the optics were unmistakable: the leader of the world’s largest G7 member simply walked away from the table. This early departure forced the remaining six leaders to scramble in damage-control, straining “to show the wealthy nations’ club still has clout” despite the American no-showl. It’s hard to overstate the humiliation. As Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov gleefully remarked, the G7 suddenly looked “very pale and quite useless” compared to broader forums like the G20.

Trump’s exit turned high diplomacy into low farce. Here was a summit supposedly “meeting the moment with unity, purpose, and force” (to quote Carney’s lofty pre-summit statement), yet it couldn’t even keep all G7 leaders in the building until the final communiqués. The American president boarded Air Force One in Calgary and, from the comfort of his plane, dismissed the remaining agenda: “We did everything I had to do at the G-7… We had a good G-7” he told reporters, utterly unbothered. The other leaders soldiered on with performative joint statements – a hasty declaration that Iran “can never have a nuclear weapon” was released before Trump bolted – but the damage was done. The image of cohesion was shattered.

Trump’s behavior also laid bare substantive rifts. He used his brief time at Kananaskis to undercut G7 consensus on Ukraine, refusing to join new Russian sanctions and even suggesting the war might not have happened if Putin hadn’t been expelled in 2014. On global trade, he continued to champion America-first tariffs that other members view as hostile and which we characterize as an existential threat to Canada. In effect, Trump treated the summit as a stage for his solo act (and we don’t mean the one with Ms. Stormy Daniels) – then literally left the stage. The remaining G7 had to “salvage” the summit without its biggest player, reinforcing the impression that this gathering of democracies was more pantomime than partnership. A forum meant to project unity instead broadcast dysfunction, all thanks to one leader’s cavalier departure. If the G7 is a club, Trump effectively tore up his membership card in public – and the others could only pretend that everything was fine.

A Summit Besieged: Modi’s Invitation Meets International Outrage

While leaders tried to insulate themselves from public pressure in their mountain enclave, public outrage forced its way onto the agenda in spite of them – most visibly through the figure of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. PM Carney’s decision to invite Modi as a guest (part of a G7 outreach to “reliable partners”) backfired spectacularly. It ignited a firestorm among diaspora communities and human rights activists who see Modi not as a “reliable partner” but as an authoritarian perpetrator. On June 16, over a hundred Sikh activists flooded Calgary’s downtown, waving Khalistan flags and hoisting posters depicting Modi behind bars. One stark banner read: “I killed Nijjar, a Canadian citizen”, directly accusing Modi of ordering the assassination of Sikh dissident Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil. This was no fringe protest – it was a highly organized, internationally resonant demonstration timed to coincide with Modi’s arrival.

The protesters’ message was explicit: Modi is a threat to human rights and even to Canadian sovereignty. They cited how last fall the RCMP openly accused Modi’s government of murder, coercion and extortion in Canada related to the Sikh diaspora. They recalled that in 2023, Canada’s then-PM Trudeau had accused Indian agents of assassinating Nijjar in B.C.. For Carney to roll out the red carpet to Modi mere months later struck many as an obscene betrayal of justice. “Outrage” is how Canadian media described public reaction to Modi’s invite. Even within Carney’s own caucus, MPs and the NDP opposition bristled at welcoming a leader with such a record.

Modi’s presence thus turned into a public relations nightmare for the summit. Far from showcasing shared values, it highlighted value-based schisms. Sikh advocacy groups like Sikhs for Justice used the G7 spotlight to “[shine a light on the crimes of Modi’s government]” and to demand the G7 hold India accountable. A protest leader exulted that Canada had unwittingly given them an opportunity to “challenge Modi directly and ambush him for the next 48 hours” on the world stage. Indeed, protesters even arranged to livestream their rallies into Kananaskis, determined that their condemnation would penetrate the summit’s fortified bubble.

All of this underscored how performative the summit’s commitment to “democratic values” really was. Officially, the G7 claims to champion human rights and rule of law. Yet here they were fêting Modi – a leader accused of eroding democracy in India, tolerating or abetting violence against minorities, and now possibly exporting repression abroad. The contradiction was not lost on civil society. “Which leaders are still committed to human rights, even as the U.S. sprints backwards? And what kind of leadership is Canada really showing by inviting a convicted criminal and climate denier who threatened Canada’s sovereignty?” challenged Climate Action Network Canada in an excoriating statement. Though aimed at climate issues (and clearly referencing Trump as the “convicted criminal”), this quote captured the broader dissonance: Canada’s summit guest list included figures actively undermining the very “common values” that G7 rhetoric exalted.

In the end, Modi’s invite achieved the opposite of its intent. Instead of showcasing G7 partnership with the “Global South,” it galvanized international protest and exposed rifts at home. Carney’s government, rather than basking in diplomatic kudos, spent the summit’s first day on the defensive, fielding questions about why it was appeasing an illiberal strongman. The spectacle of Khalistani activists thanking Canada for letting them confront Modi on Canadian soil dripped with irony. This G7 was supposed to project confident democracies forging “partnerships of the future” – instead it looked like democracies compromising their principles for power politics, and getting publicly shamed for it.

Climate Leadership or Climate Hypocrisy? Fossil Fuels Under Fire

No issue laid bare the summit’s performative diplomacy more than climate change. Coming into Kananaskis, Canada was literally on fire – “tens of thousands” displaced by unprecedented wildfires, entire provinces shrouded in smoke. If ever there was a moment for G7 “climate leadership,” this was it. Yet climate change was glaringly absent from the official agenda. Prime Minister Carney’s own list of summit priorities made zero direct mention of fighting climate change. Instead, the buzzwords were “energy security” and responding to wildfires – essentially treating symptoms while dodging causes. Incredibly, one of Canada’s top priorities was to “improve joint responses to wildfires” without acknowledging why those wildfires are intensifying. As Greenpeace Canada’s Keith Stewart put it: “Canada has invited world leaders to fly into a country that is on fire but won’t put the climate crisis on the agenda.” The summit would talk about coping with fires, but “for fear of offending Trump there is no mention of addressing the climate crisis or transitioning away from the fossil fuels that cause it.”

This blatant disconnect between rhetoric and reality did not go unnoticed. Outside the summit, climate activists staged their own interventions. In Banff, protesters held signs like “Water is Life” and tellingly “Oil and Gas Doesn’t Love You Back” – a direct rebuke to leaders clinging to fossil-fuel business-as-usual. A coalition of civil society groups publicly challenged Carney to prove that Canada’s climate commitments weren’t just lip service. “World leaders in Kananaskis this weekend must face reality and act now to implement strong climate policies and transition their economies from fossil fuels to renewable energy,” Climate Action Network Canada demanded. Their statement pointed out the elephant in the room: Carney’s government was simultaneously “shoving a bill through Parliament that threatens our environment, democratic processes, and Indigenous rights” – likely a reference to legislation favoring oil and gas interests. In other words, Canada’s climate posture on the world stage was starkly at odds with its domestic actions.

Even within the G7 family, unity on climate had eroded thanks to Trump’s return. Other G7 members have long affirmed the need to cut emissions and phase out fossil fuel subsidies. But now, with a U.S. president who openly dismisses climate science, the G7’s climate leadership regressed. The best leaders could do was quietly “hold firm on previous commitments” and avoid backsliding. Ambitious new pledges were off the table. The final communiqués tiptoed around the core issue. For instance, the leaders talked about “building energy security” and “critical minerals for the clean economy,” yet balked at any language about ending coal or setting near-term fossil phase-outs. It was a master class in diplomatic euphemism – addressing climate without really addressing it.

The upshot is that the Kananaskis summit showcased climate hypocrisy more than climate heroism. Leaders posed against the backdrop of Canada’s majestic environment while kicking the can on saving it. They extolled “a healthier, more resilient economy” in theory, even as they dodged hard decisions on decarbonization. To many observers, this looked like moral cowardice. “We can’t keep falling back on the same fossil-fuelled, extractive approaches that generated the crises we’re in,” CAN Canada’s director Caroline Brouillette warned bluntly. Yet fall back is exactly what the G7 did – falling back on platitudes and half-measures. In the face of record wildfires, their priority was coping (firefighting resources, adaptation) rather than preventing (cutting carbon). The contrast between the summit’s self-congratulatory tone and the climate emergency outside could not have been more stark. If this is what “climate leadership” looks like among the world’s richest democracies, one might rightly ask whether the G7 has any leadership legitimacy left at all.

AI and Quantum: Shiny Objects as Rhetorical Distractions

Amid conflict over wars and climate, the G7 did find enthusiastic agreement on one thing: the wonders of new technology. Perhaps nothing was as telling about the summit’s priorities as the heavy emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI) and other high-tech talking points. Prime Minister Carney’s agenda hyped “accelerating the digital transition” and “using artificial intelligence and quantum to unleash economic growth.” India’s delegation likewise trumpeted the “AI-energy nexus” as a crucial topic at Kananaskis. In press briefings, summit sherpas waxed optimistic about joint AI governance frameworks and tech partnerships. On the surface, this focus on AI might seem forward-looking. In reality, it functioned as a convenient distraction from the summit’s failures and fault lines.

Why hammer on about AI? For one, it was a safe zone of agreement. Unlike climate or human rights, AI hasn’t (yet) split G7 leaders ideologically. Talking up AI allowed leaders to project unity and innovation without addressing more divisive issues. It created an aura of progress – look, we’re planning an AI code of conduct! – even as the summit achieved precious little on urgent fronts like emissions cuts or peace in Ukraine. The allure of AI also served to captivate media attention. Tech makes for flashy headlines, drawing focus away from, say, the embarrassment of Trump’s early exit or the thousands protesting Modi. In effect, AI was deployed as rhetorical shiny object. Summit communications heavily promoted whatever slim deliverables they had on tech (e.g. an Artificial Intelligence Charter or commitments to quantum research), hoping that would fill the void of substantive outcomes elsewhere.

Critically, this emphasis on AI and digital issues also dovetailed with the summit’s performative transparency. The G7 could grandstand about harnessing technology for good – positioning themselves as forward-thinking guardians of the future – while glossing over how they were using technology in less savory ways (like mass surveillance or data harvesting, as we’ll see). AI discourse provided a feel-good narrative of cooperation (“we’re all teaming up to manage AI responsibly”) that contrasted with the summit’s underlying story of discord. It’s telling that in the official agenda, “energy security” was explicitly paired with digital transition. This pairing meant that even when talking about energy/climate, leaders could pivot to upbeat tech talk instead of fossil fuel talk.

Of course, outside observers weren’t entirely fooled. Some critics noted that focusing on futuristic AI promises did little for the crises of today. Entire communities are being razed by wildfires, war rages in Europe and the Middle East, democracies are backsliding – and the G7’s answer is to chat about algorithms and qubits? There is a profound disconnect when the summit’s closing press releases spend more time lauding a new Global Partnership on AI Ethics than detailing how to house climate refugees or rein in autocracy. In short, AI became the summit’s escape hatch – a way to appear action-oriented and unified, while escaping accountability on the very problems the G7 is ostensibly tasked to solve. It was performative problem-solving: addressing an abstract future challenge to avoid concrete present responsibilities. And it perfectly encapsulates how Kananaskis 2025 was more theater than governance.

The Surveillance Reflex: When Transparency Triggers Panic

Perhaps the most damning indictment of the summit – and of Canadian institutions’ mindset – is what happened in the shadows of Kananaskis. Even as officials preached democracy and openness, they were busy spying on those who would hold them to those ideals. In a dramatic illustration of bureaucratic insecurity, multiple Canadian government agencies engaged in recursive surveillance of a small Calgary-based private intelligence firm, ourselves, Prime Rogue Inc, during the summit period. The founder of Prime Rogue discovered that in the midst of his lawful Access to Information and Privacy Act requests to federal departments, “half the federal government of Canada” was crawling his website, scraping his content and metadata in real time. Server logs revealed a who’s who of Ottawa’s bureaucracy hitting the site: “CNSC. ISED. Transport Canada. The Solicitor General. DND. The Privy Council Office. Library and Archives Canada… Some of them hit my site once. Others? Dozens of times.” Entire articles, images, and script files were slurped up by government systems that ostensibly have no business monitoring a private citizen’s blog.

What triggered this Orwellian reflex? Simply put, the watchdog was watching them, and they blinked. Prime Rogue Inc. had filed a series of Privacy and Access to Information Act requests aimed at auditing how federal institutions handle personal data and transparency. Instead of responding in good faith, certain officials internally “creeped” the requester on LinkedIn, joked about him “ATIPing everyone,” and used his personal info for informal surveillance. This is documented in released emails: “I just creeped a guy on LinkedIn… he’s ATIPing everyone,” wrote one ISED employee, who had pulled the requester’s profile after seeing his name on a Privacy Act file. In other words, bureaucrats took a citizen’s lawful request for information and answered it with casual profiling and derision. Not only is that unethical – it arguably violates the Privacy Act’s own provisions (Section 7 and 8 forbid using or disclosing personal info for purposes other than the request itself). The requester, Prime Rogue’s Kevin J.S. Duska Jr., promptly filed a formal complaint about this misconduct, noting that “the department took identifying information from my request, then used it for informal surveillance and internal mockery. This is not how a constitutional democracy works.”

But the tale goes deeper. As Duska kept digging (through further FOI requests and technical sleuthing), he uncovered the broader “institutional flinch”: agencies literally scraping his website for intel. He describes running queries on his server logs after noticing strange, non-human traffic surges. What he found was essentially government web crawlers in overdrive. Transport Canada’s systems, for example, were caught rapidly indexing pages, grabbing images and even prefetching metadata at “breakneck speed” – a pattern he likened to someone “visiting your house and licking every piece of furniture for scent.” The Privy Council Office (which oversees bureaucratic coordination at the highest level) wasn’t reading his content – “it inhaled. Line by line, from contact page to blog roll to footer.” DND (National Defence) launched a “full-scale crawl” as well. At one point, Shared Services Canada (the IT backbone of the government) and even Library and Archives Canada (the national archive) hit his site to see what was being said about them. During the Summit, Duska discovered that the RCMP’s “Dragon” server had made at least 1,400 “get requests” to his company’s site – while the company was posting their G7 series.

This behavior exposes a remarkable anxiety within the Canadian state. Instead of addressing the transparency requests straightforwardly – as mandated by law (see Access to Information Act Section 4(2.1), which requires agencies to make “every reasonable effort to assist” requesters) – the instinct was to surveil and contain. It’s as if bureaucrats perceived a citizen’s attempt to obtain information as a threat to be monitored and managed. In Duska’s words, “These weren’t bots sniffing for exploits. These were ministries checking how visible they were in the intelligence I was producing. Watching the watcher watching them watch me.” The reflex was recursive: analysis about institutional secrecy prompted the institutions to gather analysis about the analyst. He calls it “the nervous scraping of a digital state apparatus that can’t not flinch when you look it in the eye.” In plainer terms, the government panicked at being watched, and in panicking, it revealed exactly what it wanted to hide – a deep insecurity and disregard for the very transparency principles it espouses.

Legally and procedurally, this raises red flags aplenty. Government web-scraping of a private site likely runs afoul of Privacy Act Section 4, which limits collection of personal information to what’s directly related to an authorized program. What “program” justifies scouring a watchdog’s blog? None – it was purely CYA behavior. It also contradicts the spirit of the Accessible Canada Act and equitable treatment, considering Duska had to explicitly request accessible formats – something that was weaponized by ISED in its attempt to label Duska as vexatious. Perhaps most damning, it violates the fundamental trust that democratic governments won’t treat their own citizens as enemy combatants. As Duska quipped, “the government, in effect, is panic-refreshing a Calgary-based private intelligence startup’s blog. Seriously.” The summit’s theme was “Protecting our communities and the world;” apparently that protection does not extend to Canadians who dare seek information. Instead, those citizens become targets of jittery institutional surveillance – a perfect inversion of democratic accountability.

Parody of a Presidency: From “Strong Leadership” to State Insecurity

All these threads – the stage-managed suppression of dissent, the leaders’ own disarray, the empty climate promises, the techno-distractions, and the surveillance panic – weave together into a damning portrait of the Kananaskis Summit. What was meant to be a showcase of 21st-century democratic leadership instead became a caricature of state insecurity. It is as if the summit’s official motto of “unity, purpose, and force” got flipped on its head:

• Unity? The summit descended into disunity, with Trump’s exit and internal contradictions (like inviting Modi) undercutting any common front. The only “unity” on display was the leaders unanimously agreeing to ignore their failures.
• Purpose? The declared purposes – protecting communities, securing the world, etc. – were betrayed in practice. Communities were kept at arm’s length or outright surveilled. Global security issues (Ukraine, Gaza, Iran) went unresolved or worsened. The real purpose, it seemed, was preserving face.
• Force? Indeed, force was present – but mostly as force against transparency and dissent. From RCMP enforcement of protest zones to digital firewalls against information, the Canadian host wielded force not to strengthen democracy, but to shield the powerful from accountability. It brings to mind that chilling maxim: “sovereign is he who decides on the exception.” In Kananaskis, the government decided normal democratic rules (access to information, freedom of assembly, etc.) could be suspended for the summit’s duration – a sovereign exception cloaked in the language of security.

In effect, the summit was reverse-branded by its own reality. The glossy press images of flags fluttering before Mount Kidd, and leaders gathered in idyllic “retreat,” now evoke not strength but seclusion and weakness. The G7 logo’s seven-branched tree and mountain backdrop feel less like symbols of stability, and more like an emblem of isolation – seven leaders perched high above the people, gazing at their own reflections in the alpine glass. The government’s frantic metadata grabs and website scraping, done as an institutional reflex, could even be seen as the unofficial summit logo: a snake eating its own tail, labeled “In Security We Trust.”

As a final satire, let’s coin the summit’s true taglines. Protecting Our Communities (from Themselves). Building Energy Security (while the Planet Burns). Accelerating the Digital Transition (to Authoritarianism). Securing the Partnerships of the Future (with Present-Day Autocrats). These sardonic slogans encapsulate the lived experience of Kananaskis 2025 far better than the official bromides. The Canadian presidency wanted a legacy-defining moment; it got one, but not the one it intended. Instead, this summit will be remembered as the moment democratic legitimacy hit a new low among the world’s richest democracies – a moment when performative diplomacy could no longer hide the collapse of principle happening behind the scenes.

Conclusion

Operation Recursive Enema isn’t just a catchy name – it’s what the 2025 G7 summit effectively performed on itself. By mirroring back the metadata of mendacity, we see the truth: a government that doesn’t trust its citizens, a summit that doesn’t trust its people, and a democracy that – if these trends continue – will have a hard time trusting itself. The Kananaskis summit entered history as a cautionary tale of a discursive killbox: once inside, honesty and accountability didn’t stand a chance. The only thing “transparent” about this spectacle was the fear driving it. And in that sense, the G7’s fortress in the wilderness became a fitting parody of state insecurity – one exceedingly difficult to refute, because it is documented in the very words and actions of those who would prefer we weren’t watching.