In the midst of Pete Hoekstra’s term as U.S. ambassador to Canada, he has criticized Canada’s federal election campaign as “un-American”, shared one of Donald Trump’s tweets referring to Canada as the “51st state”, and reportedly engaged in a profanity-laced outburst toward an Ontario trade official. A petition demanding his expulsion from Canada has now garnered close to 200,000 signatures.
Today, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, the Canada bureau chief for the New York Times, sheds light on Pete Hoekstra’s background, the reasons behind Canadians’ discontent with him, and what the movement to remove him indicates about the Canada-U.S. relationship.
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