Front Burner - 'Fed up' Canadians' push to oust U.S. ambassador

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

During Pete Hoekstra's tenure as U.S. ambassador to Canada, he has called Canada’s federal election campaign “un-American”, amplified one of Donald Trump’s “51st state” posts, and reportedly unleashed an expletive-laden tirade on an Ontario trade official. Now, a petition calling on him to be expelled from the country has gathered nearly 200,000 signatures. Today, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, the Canada bureau chief for the New York Times, tells us who Pete Hoekstra is, why some Canadians are so upset with them, and what the push to kick him out says about the Canada-U.S. relationship. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts 

Something is happening in Dawson Creek. A wave of violence has swept over this community of just 13,000 people. 15 murders in the last five years. I'm Timothy Sawa and from CBC's Uncover and the Fifth Estate, an investigation into deaths and disappearances in Dawson Creek and what's behind it all. The Mile Zero Murders, available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Hi, I'm Elaine Chad.

filling in for Jamie. Trade talks between the U.S. and Canada continued on Sunday, ahead of President Trump's tariff deadline in a couple of days. Canadian industries across the country are facing deep uncertainty over this. The 50% tariffs threatened by Washington on roughly $20 billion worth of goods could be devastating for the economy. Jamie is back tomorrow and will keep you posted on the big developments in this story. The tensions in the Canada-U.S. relationship are,

are playing out on a number of fronts right now. A petition to kick U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra out of the country has been garnering tons of attention this past week. Hoekstra is the most senior American diplomat in Canada. But many Canadians feel that over the past year, he's been anything but diplomatic. In October, Ontario Premier Doug Ford called him out for reportedly swearing at his provincial trade rep.

Come on, Ambassador. You've been around before Moses. Call the guy up and apologize. Let's start getting back on track. Earlier this summer, Hoekstra prompted an outcry when he amplified one of Donald Trump's 51st state threats. So they asked me, do you understand why we're mad about the 51st state? No, I don't understand that.

And then they get mad at me. The petition to oust Hoekstra calls on Mark Carney to declare him persona non-grata. It also raises questions about whether some of his actions might amount to foreign interference. At the time of this recording, it's received almost 200,000 signatures. Today, how an attempt to oust the U.S. ambassador illustrates a deeper Canadian frustration with its neighbor.

Matina Stavis Gridneth is the Canada Bureau Chief for the New York Times, and she joins me now. Hi, Matina. Hey, Elaine, thanks for having me. So we're talking about Canada-U.S. relations today and what's top of mind for so many people right now, is this looming tariff deadline on Wednesday. And what do we know about the state of trade talks right now?

You know, we're recording on Sunday afternoon, and they're ongoing at the moment. Yeah, and the top Canadian negotiators are spending the weekend in Washington to continue those talks. So the first thing we know is that the talks are happening. That's not for nothing either. There's been real issues with starting and stopping these conversations. We know that both,

leaders, President Trump and Prime Minister Carney, have been presented with options. And there's been leaks over the last few days by people associated with the talks that some kind of formula is being worked on, whereby Canada makes some concessions on the question of dairy quotas, supply management, as it's known here, on counter tariffs. Canada's imposed on autos. And the return of alcohol from the United States on provincial shelves in exchange for scrapping the threatened tariffs and improving the sectoral tariffs are already in place. But it's really a moving target. I think leaks are always strategic just a few days before a deadline. And so I think we really won't know until Tuesday midnight if there is a deal and what its final shape will be. I was noticing that

Erin O'Toole a couple of days ago, this is a the former conservative leader and member of the prime minister's advisory committee on U.S. Canada trade. They got a briefing on Friday, and he said, Well, there's optimism in terms of talking and a willingness to look at a deal of some sort, we're still quite a ways apart. And it just really might come down to those final days and hours. Absolutely. And we know that, at least from the Canadian side, the prime minister,

is under a lot of pressure not to give away everything. thing. Polling and public opinion have sort of indicated that Canadians want him to drive a tough bargain. They don't want catastrophic tariffs that will harm the Canadian economy further. And certainly people don't want this prolonged uncertainty which impacts them personally, psychologically, financially, and impacts the country from an investment and stability perspective. But people are pretty fed up. And they want Mark Carney to put up a fight. They want him to get a good deal. The prime minister has said he wants to get a comprehensive deal.

And so I don't know that one will be an offer on Wednesday, but we're here and we're going to find out. So let's shift now our focus to U.S. Ambassador Pete Hochstra and the petition to kick him out of Canada. And let's start with, you know, Matina, tell us a bit more about him and how he ended up in Ottawa in the first place. Right. Well, Pete Hoxstra is a Republican from Michigan. It's not his first ambassadorial posting. He was previously ambassador to the Netherlands, where he was actually born during the first Trump administration. I happened to have been in the region back then.

I was in Brussels as Brussels Bureau chief for the Times and watched him closely ruffle feathers and raise eyebrows next door in the Netherlands, more on that later. And he certainly brings bruskness and bluntness to his sort of verbal presentation has done always. He is not a diplomatic person, nor does he endeavor to be. And I think he's brought that in spades to Canada and to his role as President Trump's emissary here. And unabashedly so. I'm not going to try to analyze Canadians anymore, okay? I'm disappointed that I came to Canada, a Canada that it is very, very difficult to find Canadians

who are passionate about the American-Canadian relationship. He has been an amplifier and a faithful messenger of President Trump here in Canada, and I think that's upset a lot of people. And there are a few different grievances laid out in this petition to oust him. One of them is essentially that he just, just hasn't been very diplomatic that he has, for example, quote, normalize the Trump administration's threats to annex Canada as the 51st state. And you started alluding to it there, but tell me a little bit more about how you would describe his approach to being an ambassador. Right. And I do think

that this, you know, Pete Hoxter, I think, is indicative of the Trump school of diplomacy, which is not diplomacy, right, in any conventional, orthodox way that we know it. I think his approach is to really mirror the president. I think that his tone also closely resembles that of the president, which is not necessarily the case in other political appointees we're seeing U.S. ambassadors in other parts of the world. So both the messaging and, for lack of a better word, the vibe, are very Trumpy. You ran a campaign where, you know, it was anti-American, elbows up, me too. You know, it was an anti-American campaign.

And that has continued. That's disappointing. There are reasons why the president and some of his team refer to candidates being mean and nasty to deal with. Okay. Certainly he does not seek to soften or interpret. the president's message when it comes to Canada. On the contrary, he seeks to amplify it, drive it home. And it's one thing having the President of the United States say certain things about Canada from the Oval Office. It's quite another thing to have someone do so from Ottawa, right? And I think that that is truly what is upsetting people.

It's like, you're here. You could be playing a constructive role. And his critics and obviously many, many Canadians believe. that he's not. I mean, he himself has acknowledged that he doesn't do diplomatic speak very well. He also has said that, you know, I quote, I didn't come here to be liked, okay. I came here to represent the president of the United States and his agenda, and that's what I do to the best of my ability each and every day, unquote. Well, he's succeeding. Yes. He's succeeding in his stated goal. Shortly after he became the ambassador last year, Hoekstra said that From my standpoint, from the president's standpoint, 51st state's not coming back. The president may bring it up every once in a while, but he recognizes it's not going to happen unless the prime minister engages with the president.

Then in June, he shared a post from Trump calling us, calling Canada, the 51st state, and just walk me through what changed between then and now. I mean, Prime Minister Mark Carney went to Washington. I was on that trip to D.C. with a prime minister. had a fairly positive interaction with President Trump and asked him to cut it out with the 51st state stuff. If you recall, the prime minister said, as you know from real estate, there are some places that are never for sale. That's true. We're sitting in one right now, you know, Buckingham Palace and you visited as well. That's true. And having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign last several months, it's not for sale, won't be for sale.

ever. And I think the president at that time said, okay, Mark, I'll give you a little bit of space. Let's see how this goes. So he did cut it out for a while, and so did the ambassador. And then I think President Trump changed his mind, as he often does. I was like, I'm going to call you governor, a sort of jab he reserved for former Prime Minister Trudeau. So he called Prime Minister, Karnan governor, and he re-opted the 51st state rhetoric, and so did faithfully Ambassador Hoxtra. So I think that he just, he's a Trump guy, and he doesn't want to be liked. He doesn't care to be liked. President Trump certainly doesn't care to be liked by Canadians. And I think that's really what we're seeing play out in different ways and on different

topics, the 51st state being just the most menacing and the most threatening and most upsetting, I think, for many, many Canadians. During that time as well, he took issue on a couple of other fronts to write the Ontario Premier Doug Ford's anti-tariff ad that ran in the U.S. Hoekstra called it at one point to my CBC colleague, Rebecca Zandberg, and he called it. Probably the first time in American history that a foreign country came into the United States of America and try to influence our politics and our policies through electioneering. He's also kind of taken issue with Canada's response to tariffs and also of like American booze being taken off shelves. Oh, by the way, you have 11 out of your 13 provinces who ban American

products on their shelves. We haven't banned a single Canadian product in the United States. That's a pretty nasty move. You have a number of your provinces have put in provisions into their procurement process that say, oh, if you're an American company, you can't bid. That's pretty nasty. That was in response to that. Those issues like the Reagan ad and the U.S. liquor on Canadian shelves are issues the Trump administration, President Trump himself, got really.

really worked up about. And so I do think that the ambassador is closely tracking that reaction, and we're seeing that play out in real time. And the reason for that is that this specific ambassador and President Trump have a direct line to each other. That wouldn't necessarily be the case with career diplomats, people who follow a certain protocol to access the President of the United States. but I know that from my reporting that Pete Hoxtra has President Trump on speed dial and also has access to other members of the cabinet. And so you see that channel work really fast. He has said that he doesn't understand why Canadians are so upset by the 51st state stuff.

What do you make of that? I mean, I don't know if you watched this clip on Foxx, news where a presenter said, If I were a citizen of another country and I was a neighbor of the United States, I would consider it a privilege to be taken over by the United States of America. That's what everybody else in the world wants, American citizenship. For some reason, that's repellent to you, Canadians. And I think that's kind of what he's voicing.

Yet again, I think he's on theme. There's no light between himself and the president, menacing and, deeply, deeply aggravating, though the 51st state statements by the president might be to the majority of Canadians, he thinks that he would do Canada favor to annex it and add it to the United States. And so I do think that this represents quite faithfully a school of thought in the White House. Something is happening in Dawson Creek. A wave of violence has swept over this community of just 30. 13,000 people.

It's like the kind of stuff you only hear about on TV. 15 murders in the last five years. Some criminals, I put them into the category of supervillains. I'm Timothy Sawa and from CBC's On Cover and the Fifth Estate, an investigation into deaths and disappearances in Dawson Creek and what's behind it all. I'm not saying another word. Leave me alone. The Mile Zero murders, available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. You know, some people argue that his bluntness or kind of his lack of deference to diplomatic norms might actually be an asset.

The Chief of Public Policy at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Matthew Holmes has said, quote, from a business perspective, we'd rather blunt words from the source rather than a performative or peripheral player. And what do you think of that argument? Yeah. In my own story for the New York Times, a couple of business leaders from Chamber of Commerce and so on, said the same thing. And, okay, I understand that. At the same time, I don't think the President Trump requires interpretation. I think he has people like Jameson Greer. He's top trade negotiator to parlay his spicier positions into trade policy.

And that's one very specific functional role for. or a top U.S. government official. And he speaks his mind. His vice president, J.D. Vance, occasionally takes an interest in Canada and elaborates on the administration's opinions of Canada. Various so-called ideologues in the MAGA space like Steve Bannon have told the world what that part of the Republican Party thinks about Canada. I don't think we're at risk of misinterpreting President Trump and his views on Canada.

Canada. And so I don't fully buy the honesty argument. But at the same time, it is clear, based on my conversations, too, that business leaders do not find Pete Hochstrom as objectionable as many, many Canadians seem to and have a different experience interacting with him. Canada has kicked out diplomats in the past, coming back to this petition and what it's calling for. The Trudeau government expelled six Indian diplomats, including the High Commissioner in 2024 and a Chinese diplomat in 2023. The accusation in both those cases was that these diplomats were engaged in some kind of foreign interference. This petition says that separatists from the Alberta Prosperity Project met with U.S. State Department officials three times,

which raises, quote, serious questions about U.S. diplomatic interference in Canadian unity, unquote. And, Matina, first of all, like, remind us of what happened in those meetings. Sure. A number of leading figures in the Alberta separatist movement visited State Department officials in Washington, D.C., multiple times. Our reporting, and this has been widely reported, and the activists themselves have been very open about these visits. and ostensibly to discuss what their hopes are for an independent Alberta, what their plans are, and what they would like from the United States. We're talking to them about our aspirations, and we have our goals and objectives. So, you know, we're not a pawn.

We're actually more like a, you know, a rook or a queen on a chessboard, moving forward in the direction that we want to move freely on the board. You know, the ponds are the provincial premiers like Daniel Smith that are being manipulated by Carney and EB and Communist China, to do their globalist bidding. I have reported personally in my stories about this that these people asked for various different kinds of supports from the U.S. government, including, for example, access to the financial system in the United States

and the preservation of a free trade agreement between an independent Alberta and the United States. And in my interactions with the U.S. government regarding those meetings, the State Department of the White House told me that those meetings are routine and no promises were made. Nonetheless, it is something that was used politically by the U.S. administration. You may recall in January right after Davos when the U.S. administration was irritated with Prime Minister Mark Carney, that Treasury Secretary Bessent made comments that were pretty positive about the prospect of an independent

dependent Alberta. At the time of was reporting my own story about these Alberta separatist meetings in D.C., I did ask the Justice Department here in Canada, the Ministry for Justice, as well as CISS, whether they were concerned about foreign interference in a sort of legal way at this point, right? And neither the Justice Ministry nor CIS felt that there was foreign interference at that time. Huxra himself has talked about these meetings as well, right? Like, what has he said about them? Yeah, he said he wasn't aware of them. No, we're not meeting with the separatist and strategizing this at all.

No. So no $50 billion credit facility. They've said that that was the case that the American government has had conversations with them about that. That's not true? Not that I know of. No. Okay. No.

And frankly, my reporting also shows that most diplomats working for the, United States in Canada, we're not aware of those meetings taking place. And there was a mad scramble among diplomats working at the U.S. Embassy to work out who the Alberta and separatists met with. And I think that that whole episode really highlights how fragmented and sort of deprofessionalized the State Department has become under the Trump administration, where normal lines of communication between departments, between the center in D.C. and periphery have been scrambled or broken, and political appointees at the State Department sort of run their own shop, have meetings with whoever they like, and don't tell the experts or the diplomats posted in the

country about it. Given all of that, what do you make of the argument, I guess, made in the petition that the accusations around foreign interference, given kind of all the reporting that you've been mentioning there? Well, I think there's a question of foreign interference in the legal sense, right? Like, does it rise? And there's the political and discourse sense. And I think the real question here is whether the Canadian government, whether the prime minister, takes the position that these meetings do amount to meddling by the United States in Canadian affairs on a topic that is existential for Canada. losing an entire province, and whether they want to do anything about it. The ambassador, Ambassador Hoxtra, was never summoned for a chat with Foreign Minister Anand. We should assume that the government doesn't believe that he should be reprimanded for the State Department's stance on the question of Alberta.

Hoxstra also hosted a 4th of July party in Ottawa, and Tamara Leach was there one of the leaders of the Freedom Convoy, who was convicted on criminal charges last year. There were also a number of other far-right media figures there, including Ezra Levant, the head of Rebel News. And tell me more about the connections between them and also kind of how this might connect back to some of Hoekstra's own kind of history as ambassador. Sure. Well, I mean, first of all, what I would say is that it is very clear that Ambassador Hoxtra invited a number of people who mainstream Canadian sort of media and the political class dislike, but who are close ideologically to the MAGA movement.

He has form in doing this in the Netherlands, as I was mentioning earlier, during the first administration when he was ambassador in the Hague, he hosted a party at the embassy inviting far-right figures, identitarian, anti-immigrant figures. The Dutch were not impressed, and they made it very clear to the ambassador at the time that they were very, very displeased by this and did consider it, US interference in political affairs in the Netherlands.

He was using the embassy grounds for this event. And so I do believe that this is something Ambassador Hoxtra has done in a deliberate way. I don't think it's an accident. But the U.S. has long and well-documented history of using the Fourth of July party at embassies around the world to send political messages to governments. I personally have attended more than 10 July 4th parties at U.S. embassies around the world. I remember very distinctly, for example, being at the embassy party in Kenya, where I was posted. nearly 10 years ago, where the ambassador had invited human rights activists and freedom activists and

women's rights activists who were in direct conflict with the Kenyan government. And the embassy was like, these are people we like. We want them to be here. And you, foreign minister, have also been invited and you're just going to have to live with it. So there is something to be said about traditionally the United States, taking this kind of action when it comes to these events. It's just that now it's the other end of the spectrum and they're inviting far right people or populist leaders and activists, right? Tamara Litch, I believe, is, you know, considers herself a freedom of speech activist. And so all to say,

sort of this type of interfering and messaging through events and comments is not that new when it comes to U.S. foreign policy. You know, this petition is set to be presented to the House of Commons in the fall. What actually happens then? And what are the chances that Hoekstra is actually removed as ambassador here? I think the chances are very low. We have seen clearly from the Carney government that the prime minister has no interest in antagonizing the president through Ambassador Hoxtra.

Whatever is said between the two men behind closed doors, I don't know. I don't have reporting on that. But if the prime minister wanted to give Ambassador Hoxtra telling off, he would have summoned him. He would have had Netir Annanan summoned him. And that's not happened. That's not to say it won't happen in future. But I do think that the petition is a barometer. It shows us where many, many Canadians are in case anyone was wondering.

People are fed up and extremely upset and want to have their voices be heard and are using this parliamentary, democratic way of doing that. But it's not clear to me that it can or will lead to the expulsion. of the ambassador. I don't think that's going to happen on account of the petition. All that said, who knows what he might do next, that could make his position in Ottawa sort of untenable. I do also want to say, I've been at events where Ambassador Hoxtra has been perfectly professional and mildly spoken. So he can be gentler and he can be constructive, and he has the capacity to talk about policy, I think he sometimes chooses not to.

This petition has gotten quite a bit of traction, especially in this last week. It's now almost at 200,000 signatures. And obviously this is, as you've been kind of tracking, like this anger, this public anger has been growing for a while. But why do you think we're seeing kind of this point right now where there is such a fervent push to try, and kick him out.

Look, I do broadly interpret the attention and traction this petition is getting as many, many Canadians finding a way to have their voices be heard. We know so many Canadians have taken specific action on a personal level. Travel, for example. Exactly. Consumption boycotting certain products travels a big one. So I think people continue to seek ways to say, we are so angry, but there is an element here that is about Ambassador Hoxtra.

I asked the U.S. Embassy in Canada if the ambassador was upset or concerned or what his emotions were with regards to this petition and they declined to comment. But I do think that people are super fed up and find him offensive. And those people who have those emotions are signing that petition because they want the government to know. Do you think that with these trade negotiations going on right now, even if we are able to reach some kind of deal here, do you think, is there a chance that this anger persists that Canadians will still want a rupture? That's a good question. And it's a question that's not really about Pete Hoxtery. Is it? I don't claim to be a sort of, you know, interpreter of what all. Canadians think, but I do believe that the rupture that's taken place in the fabric of this relationship will not be mended and put back together to make it look like what it did before.

I do think there's space for healing in future. I think there's very important people to people ties that cannot be done away with because of one administration's actions, but something's broken, and I'm not sure it can be put back the same way. Matina, thank you so much for your time Thanks for having me, Elaine. It was a pleasure. That's all for today. I'm Elaine Chow. Thank you for listening to Frontburner. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.