What's New
President Obama hosted the 2012 G8 Summit at Camp David from May 18-19.
Summit Documents
19 May 2012 - Camp David Declaration
19 May 2012 - Fact Sheet: G-8 Action on Energy and Climate Change
19 May 2012 - Statement by the G8 on Global Oil Markets
19 May 2012 - Statement by G8 Leaders on the Global Economy
18 May 2012 - Fact Sheet: G-8 Action on Food Security and Nutrition
Ministerial Documents
12 April 2012 - G8 Foreign Ministers' Statement to Media on North Korean Missile Launch
12 April 2012 - G8 Foreign Ministers' Meeting Statement and Annex
G8
The Group of Eight (G8) is a forum for the leaders of eight of the world’s most industrialized nations, aimed at finding common ground on key topics and solutions to global issues. The G8 includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. While the leaders of these countries are in regular contact, they meet in summit format as the G8 once a year.
The G8’s origin stems from meetings held in the 1970s between France’s Valéry Giscard D’Estaing and Germany’s Helmut Schmidt when they were finance ministers. Each subsequently assumed the leadership of their respective countries, just as the mid-1970s oil crisis was buffeting the world’s largest economies. French President Giscard D’Estaing urged the leaders of Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States to meet in 1975 to discuss how to respond to the oil crisis.
Canada joined the group in 1976 at the Puerto Rico Summit hosted by the United States. The European Community, now the European Union, was given observer status the following year at the London Summit. Russia became a full-fledged member of the G8 in 1998.
Canada has hosted five summits since 1976: Ottawa-Montebello 1981, Toronto 1988, Halifax 1995, Kananaskis 2002 and Muskoka 2010.
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