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OTTAWA — Canada has been butting heads with some of its closest allies over the extent to which rising white supremacy at home and abroad poses a global threat, federal insiders say.

The quiet but at-times-controversial diplomacy has come as Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, gearing up for a federal election campaign this fall, try to portray Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer and his party as soft on white supremacy and so-called alt-right views.

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During last month’s G7 meeting of foreign ministers in Dinard, France, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland met with stiff resistance from some fellow attendees over the language she wanted to use in a joint communique, The Canadian Press has learned.

Freeland wanted the G7 to issue a joint statement after the mosque shootings that killed 50 people in Christchurch, New Zealand, but “it didn’t end up going out because we couldn’t get agreement from all other countries about white supremacy and Islamophobia,” said one Canadian official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the deliberations.