The US ambassador Pete Hoekstra has suggested Canada could be blamed if Republicans perform poorly in next week’s midterm elections, the latest intervention from a controversial figure who has been accused of inflaming a bitter dispute that has angered and baffled residents of both countries.
On Wednesday, CTV news reported that Hoekstra told business leaders at a closed door meeting that if a number of swing races – including Maine and Michigan – go to the Democrats, it could make things harder for Canada because Donald Trump might try to blame the loss on it.
“That’s an interesting way of framing it,” the prime minister, Mark Carney, told reporters when asked about the allegations.
For months, Canada and the US have been locked in a bitter tariff war, with Ottawa retaliating against illegal US tariffs and targeting goods in states that rely heavily on trade with Canada.
Carney said that Canada “will pursue” such a deal if it presents itself, but that Ottawa’s trade negotiators are “not in that position right now”.
Hoekstra is a deeply polarizing figure in Canada, particular for his response to Trump’s rhetoric about making Canada the 51st US state. Speaking to a Michigan radio station last year, he described the threats as a “sign of affection” and questioned why Canadians were offended by what he characterized as a “generous offer”. He had previously described Canada’s 2025 federal election as “anti-American”.
This year a House of Commons petition signed by more than 225,000 Canadians called for his expulsion, suggesting his statements violated diplomatic protocols, including the prohibition on diplomats interfering in the internal affairs of a host country.
More recently, Hoekstra has accused Canadian officials of interfering in US elections, pointing to Canadian politicians who have criticized the tariffs in US media, and the province of Ontario’s anti-tariff advertisement that ran on US television.
“We see all of that. We are monitoring it. We are evaluating it. And if some of it becomes election interference, America will respond to it,” Hoekstra, who comes from Michigan, recently told a Canadian podcast, adding that Canadians should “keep your nose out of American politics”.
Canada’s industry minister, Mélanie Joly, who was a target of Hoekstra’s comments, told reporters in Ottawa that her country “would never do that” and said Canada would “never accept that also being done to us in Canada”.
Carney, while in Turkey, told reporters there was “no merit” to the claims of interference and that he was “disappointed that their envoy sees that as his role, to make these suggestions”.
Roland Paris, the director of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa and a foreign affairs adviser to the former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, said the remarks were an “extraordinary thing” for a US ambassador to say about his host country and looked like an effort to “manufacture a pretext for the Trump administration’s own political difficulties”.
“The job of an ambassador is to represent the interests of his country, but it’s also to maintain channels of communication and build relationships and manage disagreements,” he said.
“His comments have repeatedly aggravated tensions instead of helping to manage them. I don’t think that he’s serving American interests very well. I’m not even sure that he’s serving the interests of his president.”
Paris points to polling in the US that shows voters have increasingly linked tariffs, the war and cost of living. There is also widespread confusion over why the White House has chosen to treat Canada as a trade adversary.
“It’s certainly not working in Canada. It’s on the contrary. It seems that every time Mr. Hoekstra opens his mouth, the Canadians are more determined than before to stand up to the bullying of the Trump administration,” he said. “That’s not serving American interests.”
The US embassy denied Hoekstra said Canada would face blame for a poor Republican showing, suggesting the remarks were “grossly taken out of context” from a broader discussion.
“The ambassador has consistently said that the Canadian media is attempting to overstate the relevance of Canadian issues in American elections. As we have previously stated, Americans will decide American elections based on issues that are important to them,” the embassy said in a statement.
At a Canadian American Business event last year, Hoekstra delivered what witnesses say was an expletive-laden tirade at Ontario’s trade representative after the province ran a series of anti-tariff ads in the US that featured Ronald Reagan. Ontario’s premier called the outburst “absolutely unacceptable” and “unbecoming of an ambassador”.
Last week, Barack Obama noted the unusual choice to attack a longtime ally while speaking at a Democratic campaign rally in Detroit, mocking Trump’s fixation on Canada and jokingly referring to his northern neighbor as a “well-known evil empire”.
“That historical adversary of ours: Canada,” the former US president said. “It’s your neighbor! It’s a few minutes drive over the bridge. These are the people who gave us Martin Short … and maple syrup. They are the nicest people. And somehow we’ve gotten them so mad.”