U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra during an event at the Halifax Chamber of Commerce in September. He was appointed to the position by U.S. President Donald Trump in April.Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press
Let’s recap.
Everything at the border is Canada’s fault. We’re not a real country and should just become the 51st state. Our economy will exist only to the extent that Donald Trump sweeps unwanted crumbs off his royal banquet table.
If we find any of that obnoxious or insulting or just absurd given that the U.S. looks like it’s about six months away from sinking into the sea under the weight of its own dysfunction, well, we’re just being rude.
And this week, the American ambassador took things up several notches. Pete Hoekstra unleashed a profane tirade on David Paterson, Ontario’s trade representative to the U.S., at the Canadian American Business Council gala on Monday.
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The rant was so intense that people nearby overheard how Mr. Hoekstra was enraged about the anti-tariff ad campaign that Ontario Premier Doug Ford launched in the U.S. Mr. Hoekstra’s wife, Diane, circled back to apologize to Mr. Paterson afterward.
So where did this, uh, unconventional diplomat come from?
Mr. Hoekstra represented Michigan in Congress for almost 20 years, and also made unsuccessful runs at the governor’s office and the Senate. He was named ambassador to the Netherlands during Mr. Trump’s first term, and he chaired the Michigan Republican Party during the 2024 election. Mr. Trump named him ambassador to Canada in April.
Mr. Hoekstra became rather infamous in his first ambassadorial role for a truly amazing little play in three acts.
The first occurred in 2015, when Mr. Hoekstra said, “The Islamic movement has now gotten to a point where they have put Europe into chaos. Chaos in the Netherlands – there are cars that are being burned, there are politicians that are being burned. And yes, there are no-go zones in the Netherlands.”
Act 2 opens in 2017, when a Dutch reporter interviewed him about his impending job as ambassador. Mr. Hoekstra’s eyes went flat with fear when the man asked about those remarks.
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“I didn’t say that. That is actually an incorrect statement,” Mr. Hoekstra said, gravely, in response to the reporter’s totally accurate recap. Then he tried to disarm things with a grin: “We would call it fake news.”
(This on its own is incredible, because it was a public panel and there is video of Mr. Hoekstra saying these things while sitting behind a little placard with his name on it.)
The reporter pushed back on him dismissing this as fake news. And Mr. Hoekstra, bless his heart, looked him square in the eye and said, “I didn’t call that fake news, I didn’t use the words today.” The journalist paused and glanced back at the camera operator as if to verify his own sanity.
Which brings us to Act 3: Mr. Hoekstra’s introductory news conference in The Hague. The Dutch reporters had a whole lot of questions about whether he would walk back those remarks, apologize or explain.
One of them had Mr. Hoekstra turn and read a plaque on the embassy fireplace, inscribed with a quote from John Adams, the first U.S. envoy: “May none but Honest and Wise Men ever rule under this Roof.” The reporter invited Mr. Hoekstra, if he possessed either of those qualities, to take back his remarks or else name one politician who had been set ablaze.
Mr. Hoekstra turned back to the press with a frozen smile and said, “Thank you,” then tried to point at another reporter for a new question. The Dutch press was having none of it. “This is the Netherlands, you have to answer the question,” one reporter informed him.
Mr. Hoekstra, then U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, gives a statement during a press conference at his residence in The Hague in January, 2018.The Associated Press
By the time he was named ambassador to Canada this spring, Mr. Hoekstra was flexing some new muscles. His diplomatic output in this country has been laced with the edgy aggression of a minor bully punching a kid in the head, while glancing over to see if the alpha bully approves of his work.
At a G7 business summit in May, Mr. Hoekstra made a lame joke about bad investments and when the audience reacted with befuddlement, he said, “Some of my friends in Canada don’t have the greatest sense of humour.”
In remarks at a Canadian-American economic conference in Bellevue, Wash., in July, he complained that Canadians were “mean and nasty” for refusing to travel to the U.S. and pulling American booze from store shelves.
Then at the Global Business Forum in Banff in September, Colin Robertson, vice-president of the Canada Global Affairs Institute and a former diplomat, asked the ambassador what he was doing to help the Canada-U.S. relationship. The President didn’t seem well-informed in declaring that Canada has nothing the U.S. needs, Mr. Robertson observed.
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The U.S. ambassador was not happy.
“You may not like some of the things he says or whatever, but to describe the President as being uninformed, excuse me, you don’t hear Americans talking about our disagreements with Canadian politicians and saying they’re uninformed,” Mr. Hoekstra bristled.
The world is undeniably a worse place for Mr. Trump being part of it, let alone running the joint. And the last thing anyone needs is some jumped-up Trump tribute band, playing the same songs slightly off-key and waiting for a nod of approval from the big guy.
Mr. Hoekstra’s aggression underlines how obnoxious and abusive the Trump administration has become. Canada has been swallowing indignities out of strategic necessity for months. Everyone has their limit.
The 1983 movie A Christmas Story revolves around a nine-year-old boy named Ralphie who hits one of those limits. Day-dreamy, with chubby cheeks and glasses, he’s an easy target for the neighbourhood toughs, and Ralphie’s usual tactic is to scuttle away.
Mr. Hoekstra in Traverse City, Mich., in October, 2024.Paul Sancya/The Associated Press
In one scene, Ralphie is walking dejectedly home after he’s had a rotten day. That’s when Scut Farkus, the huge, terrifying, yellow-eyed bully, fires a snowball at Ralphie’s face and mocks him as he starts to cry.
But this time, Ralphie doesn’t run. Instead, he leaps at Scut, knocking him backward into the snow, and proceeds to beat the ever-loving snot out of him, while a crowd of kids watches in awe.
Until now, Canada has adopted Ralphie’s usual tactic of scurrying away in self-preservation. That Ronald Reagan ad has drawn such wild-eyed fear and loathing from the White House that we can enjoy knowing that we threw one punch that connected with an eye socket.
Still, there’s no denying we have little leverage compared with our tormentor, and that limits our response in ways that are both pragmatically and emotionally unsatisfying.
But maybe it’s not Ralphie who will administer the comeuppance. No matter how many lies they’re told, eventually Americans will feel the damage of Mr. Trump’s trade war directly, unavoidably. Then the bleached and drooping truth of the emperor’s new wardrobe will be there for all to see.
Look at how the world is already remaking itself in real time, like one of those animated time-lapse maps that shows the continents shifting over millennia. There’s an unmistakable pattern to the drift now: The rest of the world is rearranging itself around, and away from, Donald Trump’s United States.
It doesn’t matter whom he sends to scream us into submission; everyone can see that the new American exceptionalism is becoming the world’s basket case.