After boycotting American products and shunning vacations south of the border, Canadians in the thousands are pouring their incandescent anger at the United States into a new cause: ousting the American ambassador.<\/p>\n
More than 190,000 people have signed a petition<\/a> to the Canadian Parliament, submitted by a Calgary resident on July 21, calling for the removal of the ambassador, Pete Hoekstra.<\/p>\n The petition asserts that Mr. Hoekstra, a faithful messenger of President Trump\u2019s aggressive stance toward Canada, has harmed U.S.-Canada relations. The two countries are locked in a trade war, and their relationship, once the closest two nations can be, has been at a historic low since Mr. Trump retook office.<\/p>\n Just 500 signatures are legally required to bring an online petition to the Parliament floor for discussion, and this one will most likely be put forward for debate in the fall by Elizabeth May, the leader of Canada\u2019s Green Party.<\/p>\n The petition lays out the reasoning for Mr. Hoekstra\u2019s removal: it argues that he has \u201cnormalized the Trump administration\u2019s threats to annex Canada as the 51st state.\u201d Mr. Hoekstra has reposted Mr. Trump\u2019s 51st-state jabs on social media and has dismissed Canadians\u2019 anger at the rhetoric as \u201cemotional\u201d and inexplicable.<\/p>\n It also states that Mr. Hoekstra has interfered in Canadian politics in a manner \u201cinconsistent with diplomatic protocol.\u201d It lays out how activists from Alberta seeking to break away from the rest of the country repeatedly met with State Department officials, \u201craising serious questions about U.S. diplomatic interference in Canadian unity.\u201d<\/p>\n The petition calls on the Canadian government to invoke the Vienna Convention of Diplomatic Relations<\/a>, the international accord that governs diplomacy, to declare Mr. Hoekstra \u201cpersona non grata\u201d and request his removal from office, as well as to set up a parliamentary committee to review \u201cU.S. diplomatic interference in Canadian domestic affairs.”<\/p>\n The United States Embassy in Ottawa referred questions to the State Department, which did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n The petition culminates months of souring public sentiment toward Mr. Hoekstra personally, mirroring the plummeting views toward the United States generally.<\/p>\n Polling shows Canadians\u2019 opinion of the United States has rapidly gotten worse since Mr. Trump took office and began targeting Canada with tariffs and talk of making it part of the United States. A Pew survey<\/a> published in June found that only 35 percent of Canadians now view the United States as a reliable partner, down sharply from 2022, when it was 82 percent. Canadian recreational visits to the United States have shrunk by more than a quarter over the past year.<\/p>\n In this context, Mr. Hoekstra, a former Republican Representative from Michigan, has become notorious in Canada for his blunt, unapologetic tone, which channels Mr. Trump\u2019s<\/a>.<\/p>\n One comment that drew ire came in November, when Mr. Hoekstra was asked if he understood why Canadians found Mr. Trump\u2019s 51st state remarks upsetting.<\/p>\n \u201cHere, I\u2019ll just get myself in trouble,\u201d he said<\/a>. \u201cI go around the country and people will say, \u2018Pete, you just don\u2019t understand why we\u2019re so mad about the 51st state.\u2019 Yeah, you\u2019re right. I don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n Unlike some of his colleagues, Mr. Hoekstra has never been summoned by the Canadian government, a step taken when a diplomatic emissary is seen as overstepping so badly that the host government needs to give them a talking-to.<\/p>\n The United States ambassador to France, Charles Kushner, the father of Mr. Trump\u2019s son-in-law, Jared, has been twice summoned<\/a> by the French government over comments he has made<\/a> about French domestic affairs. The U.S. ambassador to Belgium was also summoned<\/a> for comments he made.<\/p>\n