Quebec, Ontario mayors shut out from White House annual meeting

Hénia Ould-Hammou · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 06, 2025 3:57 PM EST | Last Updated: 26 minutes ago

Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante and St. Catharines, Ont., Mayor Mat Siscoe have been excluded from an yearly gathering with White House officials scheduled for Friday.

The meeting, organized by the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, a bilateral conjugation of implicit 244 municipal and determination mayors, will proceed arsenic planned arsenic portion of the yearly Great Lakes Day lawsuit successful Washington, but exclusively with American mayors.

Christine Maydossian, a spokesperson for the coalition, told CBC News that the White House had been alert of the gathering for the past month, but connected Wednesday, it said Canadian mayors would not beryllium welcome.

"The Cities Initiative was informed connected Wednesday, March 5th, 2025, for the archetypal time, and conscionable 48 hours earlier the planned meeting, that owed to diplomatic protocol, determination wasn't capable clip to process the requests of the Canadian mayors," she said.

According to her, arsenic a result, Plante and Siscoe were replaced by U.S. mayors astatine the meeting. 

"Above all, I deliberation that the Trump entourage and President Trump privation to nonstop messages to marque it wide that things won't beryllium the aforesaid betwixt Canada and the United States," said Plante. 

Laval, Que., Mayor Stéphane Boyer said helium wasn't amazed by the decision given the existent governmental context. 

"They accidental it's for information reasons, that they haven't had clip to cheque people's identities," helium told Radio-Canada. "I deliberation it's a governmental determination to garbage representatives of Canada."

Still, Boyer believes the determination is improbable to person a large impact. 

"I judge that the archetypal radical who tin enactment unit connected the Americans are American companies, American citizens, American elected officials, and that's what we person the accidental to do, to conscionable respective of them to effort to get them to transportation our message."

The mayors of Montreal, Laval and Quebec City Mayor Bruno Marchand travelled to the U.S. superior this week. They volition proceed to conscionable with different American elected officials — both Democrats and Republicans.

On Radio-Canada's Tout un matin Thursday morning, Plante said the mayors are taking the accidental to plead their lawsuit against President Donald Trump's 25 per cent tariffs and rise consciousness astir the consequences of this arguable move.