Quebec’s new separatist government accused Ottawa on Tuesday of barring the province from this week’s EU-Canada summit in Montreal and warned it would have the last word on any deals struck there that concern its powers. The dispute erupted Tuesday morning when Quebec Justice Minister Marie-Claude Sarrazin said in a statement that Ottawa had refused Premier Paul St-Pierre Plamondon's request to address the summit, which opens Thursday. St-Pierre Plamondon said in a post on X that the decision revealed a “serious lack of respect,” adding that Ottawa would rather he “serve shrimp cocktail” at a function rather than address one.
Ottawa also turned down a September request from the previous Quebec government to host a reception on the sidelines of the summit, Sarrazin noted. Prime Minister Mark Carney hit back, saying St-Pierre Plamondon had himself turned down an invitation to the Thursday night summit dinner. The tiff threatens to overshadow an international gathering that Carney, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa have billed as a step change in mutual relations, driven by U.S.
President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariffs and scorn for the postwar Western consensus. Early drafts of the joint declaration include a digital trade deal and a pact that lets the European Investment Bank finance Canadian critical minerals projects. Many of those deliverables fall under provincial jurisdiction, such as natural resources.
Her statement evoked the 1965 Gérin-Lajoie doctrine, a principle of Quebec’s international policy that holds it can conduct its own foreign relations in areas the Canadian Constitution assigns to the provinces. It also noted that Quebec had a seat at the table during negotiations on CETA, the EU-Canada trade deal signed in 2015, attending more than 100 meetings. Yves-François Blanchet, leader of the separatist Bloc Québécois in the federal parliament, also said he had been refused a request to attend.
Don’t speak,” he told reporters on Parliament Hill. On Tuesday midmorning Ottawa time, Trump congratulated St-Pierre Plamondon on his election victory — three weeks after the actual Oct. 5 ballot — sharing an article headlined “Separatists win Quebec provincial election in blow to Mark Carney.” Trump and Carney have been at odds since the dramatic implosion of mutual trade talks in late August, with the U.S. president deploring the Canadian leader as “nasty.” The Quebec premier, meanwhile, is all-in on sovereignty in a province where support for separating from Canada reached a three-decade low of 29% earlier this year. Carney rejected St-Pierre Plamondon’s claims of exclusion, saying Quebec had been consulted on the summit.
Carney’s office told POLITICO on Tuesday that it had invited every premier to attend the Thursday dinner in Montreal. St-Pierre Plamondon also skipped a federal meeting with Indigenous leaders and premiers on Monday, an absence Carney criticized. Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said the premier was “welcome” in Montreal, but that the summit was a federal meeting, with geopolitics a federal area of responsibility.
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