After boycotting American products and avoiding vacations south of the border, thousands of Canadians are turning their incandescent anger against the United States into a new cause: dismissing the American ambassador. More than 190,000 people have signed a petition to the Canadian Parliament, presented by a Calgary resident on July 21, calling for the dismissal of the ambassador, Pete Hoekstra. The petition claims that Mr. Hoekstra, a faithful messenger of President Trump’s aggressive stance toward Canada, has damaged relations between the United States and Canada. The two countries are locked in a trade war, and their relationship, once the closest two nations can be, has been at an all-time low since Trump took office. Only 500 signatures are legally required to bring an online petition to the floor of Parliament for discussion, and it will most likely be tabled for debate in the fall by Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada. The petition lays out the reasoning for Hoekstra’s removal: it argues that he has “normalized the administration’s threats to annex Canada as the 51st state.” Hoekstra has reposted Trump’s attacks on the 51st state on social media and dismissed Canadians’ anger at the rhetoric as “emotional” and inexplicable. It also claims that Hoekstra has interfered in Canadian politics in a manner “inconsistent with diplomatic protocol.” It describes how Alberta activists seeking to secede from the rest of the country repeatedly met with State Department officials, “raising serious questions about US diplomatic interference in Canadian unity.” The petition calls on the Canadian government to invoke the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the international agreement governing diplomacy, to declare Mr. Hoekstra “persona non grata” and request his removal from office, as well as to establish a parliamentary committee to review “United States diplomatic interference in the internal affairs of Canada.” questions to the State Department, which did not respond to a request for comment. The petition caps months of bitter public sentiment toward Mr. Hoekstra personally, reflecting plummeting opinions toward the United States in general. Polls show Canadians’ opinion of the United States has worsened rapidly since Mr. Trump took office and began attacking Canada with tariffs and talking about making it part of the United States. A Pew survey released in June found that only 35 per cent of Canadians now see the United States as a reliable partner, down sharply from 2022, when it was 82 per cent. Recreational visits by Canadians to the United States have dropped by more than a quarter over the past year. In this context, Hoekstra, a former Republican representative from Michigan, has become famous in Canada for his frank and unapologetic tone, which channels that of Trump. One comment that sparked anger came in November, when Mr. Hoekstra was asked if he understood why Canadians found Mr. Trump’s comments about the 51st state upsetting. Yes you’re right. Unlike some of his colleagues, Hoekstra has never been summoned by the Canadian government, a move taken when a diplomatic emissary is deemed to have gone so far overboard that the host government needs to talk to them. The US ambassador to France, Charles Kushner, father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared, has been summoned twice by the French government for comments he has made about French internal affairs. The US ambassador to Belgium was also cited for his comments. Hoekstra also drew attention when he invited right-wing populist activist Tamara Lich, convicted of organizing the trucker convoy that wreaked havoc in Ottawa for a month in 2022, to this year’s Fourth of July party at the ambassador’s official residence. Hoekstra has been accused of political interference in the internal affairs of another nation. In 2020, while serving as US ambassador to the Netherlands during the first Trump administration, he hosted an event at the US embassy with a nativist, anti-immigrant Dutch party. Expelling a US ambassador would be a first for Canada, but is unprecedented globally. Hoekstra’s stance in Canada aligns with the US administration’s foreign policy elsewhere. The State Department has made significant efforts to cultivate and promote identity politics in Europe through visits and meetings of senior officials with European political parties and other organizations that share these ideas, including in Germany and Great Britain. Representatives of the business community said Mr. Hoekstra had been a solid interlocutor during tumultuous times for the relationship between the two nations. The U.S. Embassy in Canada recommended speaking to some business leaders about their working relationship with Mr. Hoekstra. They included Rick Tachuk, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Canada, a private non-profit organization that promotes cross-border trade and investment; and Beth Burke, executive director of the Canadian American Business Council, a non-partisan, nonprofit group. Tachuk says Hoekstra has been available to business leaders and cares about the trade relationship between the United States and Canada. “Sometimes he can be blunt, but in many ways that’s an advantage for us because it helps articulate the president’s vision and helps us understand what the challenges are,” Tachuk said in an interview Friday. “Ambassador Hoekstra has to convey some very unpopular messages here in Canada. It’s a difficult job, but he is doing his best,” he added. Burke said Hoekstra was well connected throughout the administration and was an effective messenger. “I also really value knowing where you stand in a situation. Sometimes jokes and diplomatic speeches muddy the waters,” he added.
