President Trump said on Thursday that Canada is no longer invited to join him International Peace Councilafter days of tension between the president and the United States’ neighbor to the north.
The president announced the move in a message to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Truth Social, saying the Peace Council “rescinds its invitation to you for Canada to join, what will be, the most prestigious Council of Leaders that has ever met, at any time.”
CBS News has reached out to the White House and Global Affairs Canada for comment.
This decision came after Mr. Trump officially launched the Peace Board at a Thursday morning event in Davos, Switzerland. The board’s official mandate is to help oversee the Gaza Strip under a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas established by the Trump administration last year, although Mr.
Representatives from more than a dozen countries – apart from Canada – appeared at the board’s charter signing ceremony.
Carney told reporters last week that he had agreed “in principle” to join the Peace Board, but noted that key details of how the board would operate and how it would fund the reconstruction of Gaza remained unsettled. He also called the “unimpeded flow of aid” to Gaza “a condition for moving forward.”
His government also denied that he was paid to get a seat on the board. American officer he previously told CBS News that countries could contribute $1 billion to become permanent members of the Peace Board rather than three-year membership, although payment was not required as a condition of joining. Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne told reporters earlier this week that “Canada will not pay if we join the Peace Board.”
It is not clear why Mr. Trump withdrew Canada’s invitation. But the US leader has traded bitter words with Mr Carney in recent days, adding to a two-month standoff between the neighbors over trade and Mr Carney’s tariffs.
In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday, Carney warned that the world is “in the middle of an explosion.” He pointed to the increasing use of “cost as profit,” the decline of international institutions and the danger of “[i]If the great powers give up even the pretense of rules and standards to pursue their power and interests unhindered, the gains from trade will be difficult to replicate.”
Carney did not mention the name of Mr. Trump, but the speech was widely interpreted in part as a response to Mr. Trump’s foreign policy, which has been closely watched in recent days due to his push for the US to take over Greenland.
A day later, in his speech in Davos, Mr. Trump lashed out at Carney, accusing him of showing ingratitude to the US despite getting “a bunch of freebies from us.”
“I watched your prime minister yesterday. He didn’t thank me that much. But they should thank us,” the president said at one point. “Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”
Carney fired back on Thursday, saying: “Canada doesn’t survive because of the United States. Canada thrives because we are Canadians.”
