{"id":13432,"date":"2014-06-03T22:13:07","date_gmt":"2014-06-03T14:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=13432"},"modified":"2014-06-03T22:13:07","modified_gmt":"2014-06-03T14:13:07","slug":"harper-heads-off-to-europe-for-g7-d-day-events-with-putin-on-his-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/06\/03\/harper-heads-off-to-europe-for-g7-d-day-events-with-putin-on-his-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"Harper heads off to Europe for G7, D Day events, with Putin on his mind"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"PM<\/a>
PM Stephen Harper at the National Day of Honour Ceremony on Parliament Hill. Photo courtesy of Harper’s official Facebook page.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper departs today for Europe, a week-long trip that includes a celebration of the end of the Cold War and ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of the Normandy invasion.<\/p>\n

He joins U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders in Warsaw on Wednesday to mark what the Prime Minister’s Office calls the 25th anniversary of Poland’s emergence from communism.<\/p>\n

June 4, 1989, was the day Poland’s anti-communist Solidarity movement officially won power in democratic elections.<\/p>\n

From there, Harper travels to Brussels to attend a G7 summit, which was cobbled together to replace a G8 meeting scheduled for Sochi, Russia, scrubbed in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

He ends the trip in Normandy, where he’ll attend D-Day ceremonies, an event which is expected to include Russian President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n

Harper hasn’t expressed any desire to speak to the Russian leader, although it’s likely he will speak to others about Putin.<\/p>\n

The prime minister has labelled Putin a threat to world peace after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula. Harper blames Putin for instigating the continuing unrest in eastern Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Just last Friday, Harper denounced the Russian in a fiery speech in Toronto, linking him with the worst evils of 20th century communism, which he called a ruthless and “poisonous ideology” that “slowly bled into countries around the world.”<\/p>\n

Harper’s Warsaw stop will contrast a Poland that has become an Eastern European success story with an economically hobbled Ukraine’s struggling to break from the influence of Putin’s Russia.<\/p>\n

Harper will meet Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk to discuss the world’s response to the Ukraine crisis.<\/p>\n

Harper has said once he’s in Brussels, he’ll lobby his fellow leaders to come up with more money for his signature initiative on maternal and child health.<\/p>\n

He’ll also talk jobs and the global economy, but Ukraine and Russia will also be on his plate.<\/p>\n

Harper has been promoting a common front as the best way to respond to Russia recent aggressive moves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper departs today for Europe, a week-long trip that includes a celebration of the end …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":12266,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145],"tags":[3576,1241,273,1411],"class_list":["post-13432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","tag-d-day","tag-europe","tag-stephen-harper","tag-vladimir-putin","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}