President Trump said Thursday that Canada is not invited to join his International Peace Commissionafter days of tension between the president and the northern neighbor of the United States.
The president announced the move in a message to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney Social Truthsaying that the Peace Council “is withdrawing your invitation to membership in Canada, in what will be, at any time, the most distinguished Commission of Chiefs ever assembled.”
CBS News has reached out to the White House and Global Affairs Canada for clarification.
The decision came after Mr. Trump formally launched the Peace Commission At a Thursday morning event in Davos, Switzerland. The council’s official mandate is to help oversee the Gaza Strip under the Israel-Hamas cease-fire deal brokered by the Trump administration last year, although Mr. Trump has expressed broader intentions, and exactly how it will work is unclear.
Representatives from more than a dozen countries—including Canada—appeared at the commission’s charter signing ceremony.
Carney told reporters last week that he had agreed “in principle” to join the Peace Council, but noted that how the committee would operate and how it would fund reconstruction in Gaza remained unclear. He also called “unhindered aid flows” to Gaza a “precondition for moving forward”.
His government also rejected paying to get a seat on the commission. A US officer he previously told CBS News that countries could contribute up to $1 billion to become permanent members of the Peace Council rather than three-year membership, although payment was not required as a condition of entry. Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne told reporters earlier this week, “Canada will not pay if we join the Peace Commission.”
It is unclear why Mr Trump rescinded Canada’s invitation. But the US leader has traded tough words with Carney in recent days over the months-long dispute between the two neighboring countries over trade and Mr Trump’s tariffs.
in one Speech given at the World Economic Forum in Davos On Tuesday, Carney warned that the world is “in the midst of a rupture.” He stated that “tariffs are used more and more as a lever”, the decline of international institutions and “(i)f the great powers give up even the pretense of norms and values in order to continue their power and interests unhindered, the gains of transactionism will be more difficult to repeat”.
Mr. Carney did not name-check Mr. Trump, but he did check the speech very interpreted partly in response to Mr. Trump’s approach to foreign policy, which has come under scrutiny in recent days for the US’s push to annex Greenland.
A day later, in a speech in Davos, Mr Trump attacked Carney, accusing him of being ungrateful to the US despite receiving “a lot of freebies from us”.
“I saw your prime minister yesterday. He wasn’t that grateful. But they should thank us,” the president said at one point. “Canada lives for the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”
Carney was shot on Thursdaysaying, “Canada does not live because of the United States. Canada thrives because we are Canadians.”