Members of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s cabinet, which was sworn in on Tuesday, weren’t the only newcomers to Ottawa’s political scene this week. At an Ottawa conference on Friday, Pete Hoekstra gave his first official speech as the United States’ ambassador to Canada.
While the speech was, not surprisingly, filled with praise for President Trump and his actions in office, the tone and rhetoric diverged from the president’s when it came to Canada.
For starters, there was no “51st state” talk. That was consistent with an earlier interview Mr. Hoekstra gave to The National Post.
“From my standpoint, from the president’s standpoint, 51st state’s not coming back,” he told the newspaper. “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.”
Nor did Mr. Hoekstra, a former Republican congressman from Michigan, follow Mr. Trump’s lead in presenting a long list of goods, like automobiles, lumber and oil, that the United States supposedly does not need from Canada.
Instead, Mr. Hoekstra played off Mr. Carney’s remark to Mr. Trump during their Oval Office meeting that he had been advised by the “owners of Canada” that their country wasn’t for sale.
“But how did he describe it the other day?” Mr. Hoekstra asked the crowd at a gathering before the Group of 7 meeting that was organized by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. “‘The owners.’ Really, they are the owners of Canada, the people that we work for.”
He added: “I like that. I’m just going to steal it from Carney.”
Instead of talking about using tariffs to make automaking unprofitable in Canada, as Mr. Trump has, Mr. Hoekstra listed a number of areas in which, he suggested, the United States wanted to work with Canada. They include artificial intelligence and energy.
“If we’re all pushing in the same direction, we’ll be even more amazed about what we can accomplish together,” he said.
Much was unsaid during the speech, which Mr. Hoekstra delivered walking around on a stage without notes. And despite his talk of friendship and his conciliatory, folksy style, he offered no real forecast on the possibility of the United States’ lifting its tariffs on Canada.
While, like Mr. Trump, the new ambassador praised Mr. Carney, he is by no means his political ally. Mr. Hoekstra was a founding member of the Tea Party movement in the Republican caucus that advocated, often bluntly and with rage, small-government libertarianism.
This is his second appointment as ambassador by Mr. Trump. Mr. Hoekstra, 71, who as a small child immigrated to the United States — Holland, Mich., to be precise — from the Netherlands, was sent back there to lead the embassy during Mr. Trump’s first term.
Things did not always go smoothly.
When Mr. Hoekstra arrived in 2018, he was pressed by Dutch journalists on false claims he had made about the Muslim community in the Netherlands three years earlier to a conservative group in the United States.
[Read from 2018: Pressed on False Claims About Muslims, U.S. Ambassador Goes Silent]
He said that because of an “Islamic movement,” there was “chaos in the Netherlands. There are cars being burned. There are politicians that are being burned.”
Mr. Hoekstra added, “And yes, there are no-go zones in the Netherlands.”
When a Dutch television journalist asked about the remarks, Mr. Hoekstra denied making them, calling it “fake news.”
After the journalist showed Mr. Hoekstra a widely available online video of his remarks, he then denied his denial.
“I didn’t call that fake news,” he said.
Mr. Hoekstra told a Dutch newspaper that his comments were “wrong” and issued a statement of regret. But he declined to answer further questions about his false claim.
Then, in 2020, Mr. Hoekstra was the subject of a new controversy, as co-host of a fund-raiser in the American Embassy for the Forum for Democracy, a far-right, populist Dutch political party.
[Read from 2020: U.S. Ambassador to Netherlands Faces Questions About Political Interference]
Steven Erlanger, The Times’s chief diplomatic correspondent, reported at the time that hosting a political fund-raising event would be “interference in domestic politics and a violation of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.” The State Department called it a “town hall discussion” and not a fund-raiser.
Invitations to the event came from “the Forum for Democracy and Pete Hoekstra” and included contact details for the party’s head of fund-raising.
On Friday, Mr. Hoekstra was warmly welcomed by the business audience, while anger and resentment toward the United States dominate Canada.
It now remains to be seen whether on July 4 the large crowds that typically flock to the Independence Day party at the ambassador’s official home will materialize.
Trans Canada
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Among the many issues now mired in the troubled relations between Canada and the United States is the renegotiation of the Columbia River Treaty. Karen Weise, my Seattle-based colleague, writes that “Mr. Trump’s erratic trade policies have thrown uncertainty into the future of the Pacific Northwest, creating new worries around everything from electricity to flood control.”
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As Mr. Trump guts American research institutions, Canada is among the nations hoping to exploit the “once-in-a-century brain gain opportunity,” Patricia Cohen reports from London.
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Honda has postponed an $11 billion investment to make electric vehicles and batteries in Alliston, Ontario, dealing a blow to Canada’s once expansive plan to build a multibillion-dollar E.V. industry. The company also said that because of U.S. tariffs, it would move some S.U.V. production from there to a plant in the United States, although it said later in the week that a product shift in the reverse direction would keep Canadian production and employment intact.
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Two people were killed by a raging wildfire in Manitoba that forced the evacuation of an entire town but trapped the victims before rescue crews could reach them.
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Souvankham Thammavongsa, a novelist and poet in Toronto, writes in Modern Love about her gift of divorce.
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Scientists working at the Royal Ontario Museum have discovered Cambrian Period creatures known as sea moths with a seemingly alien third eye, but also anatomical features more in line with modern animals.
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Vjosa Isai has looked into Mr. Trump’s often repeated claim that the United States doesn’t need a wide array of imports from Canada.
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The Canadian rapper Tory Lanez was hospitalized after being attacked in the California prison where he is serving a 10-year sentence for shooting the hip-hop star Megan Thee Stallion.
Ian Austen reports on Canada for The Times based in Ottawa. He covers politics, culture and the people of Canada and has reported on the country for two decades. He can be reached at [email protected].
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Ian Austen reports on Canada for The Times based in Ottawa. He covers politics, culture and the people of Canada and has reported on the country for two decades. He can be reached at [email protected].
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