Hoekstra's missteps in Canada are mild compared to some of Trump's ambassadors

The U.S. ambassador to Canada's behaviour has clearly rubbed many Canadians the wrong way.

Over 225,000 of them signed a House of Commons petition to declare Pete Hoekstra persona non grata — the rarely used diplomatic lever to kick an ambassador out of the country.

Jeremy Kinsman, who held important posts including ambassador to Moscow, London and the EU during his career as a Canadian diplomat, says Hoekstra's actions don't rise to the level that would normally lead to such a step.

"PNG is for egregious behaviour," such as malfeasance and direct interference in Canadian affairs, he said. But that doesn't mean Kinsman is an admirer of Hoekstra's.

WATCH | More about the petition:

In diplomacy, said Kinsman, it's important to separate the messenger from the message. The problem of the Trump administration — embodied by Hoekstra — is that an already unpalatable message is being delivered by an undiplomatic messenger.

"[Hoekstra] does express frustration, exasperation, grievance with Canada that Canadians find bizarre.… Seemingly we're supposed to submit, quietly, docilely and accept all this stuff," Kinsman said.

"What the president of the United States thinks is offensive, it's hostile, it's aggressive, it's uninformed, it's untruthful. And [Hoekstra] radiates it."

The U.S. Embassy has declined to comment on the petition beyond acknowledging its existence.

No desire to explain

Some American career diplomats have observed the Trump era with dismay.

John Dinkelman ended a 37-year career last year, and was elected by his peers to head the American Foreign Service Association — essentially the diplomats' union.

Being a diplomat is not about being nice, said Dinkelman, but it is also not about gratuitously alienating your hosts.

"The idea behind diplomacy is to actually arrive at a point where your foreign interlocutor sees the logic your way and you are actually perceived to be doing — if not effectively doing — things for the betterment of all," he said.

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"You've got to at least explain for your audience — the Canadian public — the context of it. He doesn't do that," Kinsman said.

Kinsman says Hoekstra's attitude has echoes of Chinese ambassador Lu Shaye, who picked several fights with his hosts during a low-water mark in Canada-China relations, including accusing the country of "white supremacy" over the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.

Lu had already moderated his tone somewhat by the time he left Canada in 2019, and today, China seems to have decided the aggressive "wolf warrior" diplomacy he represented isn't that effective.

U.S. ambassadors, said Kinsman, are now the ones throwing their weight around and offending hosts.

"In Europe where their ambassadors are doing this sort of stuff, the United States is held in esteem today in percentage terms at about half of what Europeans now hold for China. What kind of a win is that?" he said.

Hoekstra has certainly fared no worse in Canada than he did as ambassador to the Netherlands during Trump's first term, when he found himself having to apologize after making false claims about Muslim "no-go zones" and politicians being set on fire.

And he's hardly unique among political ambassadors of the Trump era. Nor is Canada alone in having a petition to refuse credentials. Iceland had one after its new ambassador-designate, former Missouri congressman Billy Long, joked that he would turn the country into the 52nd state with himself as its governor.

He later apologized, something not all Trump ambassadors have elected to do.

Trump's ambassador to Chile, former U.S. Border Patrol agent Brandon Judd, made it his business to condemn Chileans who criticize Trump or his policies, including Chile's former left-wing president Gabriel Boric, and to attack ministers in the new right-wing government of José Antonio Kast who dared to criticize U.S. tariffs.

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"He knows nothing about diplomacy," commented former Chilean foreign minister José Miguel Insulza this month.

When Ambassador Tom Rose began his tenure in Warsaw in late 2025, Prime Minister Donald Tusk greeted him as "a true friend of Poland" who "understands our external and internal situation very well." 

Two months later, Tusk was tweeting, "Mr. Ambassador Rose, allies should respect, not lecture, each other. At least that is how we, here in Poland, understand partnership."

That was after Rose announced that the U.S. would have "no further dealings, contacts, or communications" with the Speaker of Poland's legislature, for expressing the view that Trump didn't deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.

Ambassador barred from meeting French officials

Though it's perhaps the U.S. ambassador to France, Charles Kushner, who has most upset his hosts.

Kushner, a convicted fraudster and the father of Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, wrote an open letter last summer accusing France of tolerating antisemitism and chiding it for moving toward the recognition of Palestine, saying "antizionism is antisemitism, pure and simple."

France responded that Kushner's "allegations are unacceptable" and "contravene international law" by interfering in domestic affairs. Kushner was summoned to the French diplomatic headquarters in Paris, the Quai D'Orsay, but failed to show.

He ignored a second summons two months later when the U.S. Embassy spoke out about "violent radical leftism" after the killing of French neo-fascist activist Quentin Deranque.

France has since banned Kushner from meeting any French official, citing his "misunderstanding of the basic expectations of an ambassador who has the honour of representing his country."

Next door in Belgium, the country's foreign minister responded angrily earlier this year to U.S. Ambassador Bill White's "personal attacks" around laws requiring medical certification for circumcision, saying his actions "violate basic diplomatic norms."

Then there's Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who is popular with his Israeli hosts, but who managed to offend every other government in the Middle East by saying that the Bible gives to the Jews all the land "from the Nile to the Euphrates, which is, once again, basically the entire Middle East," and adding "it would be fine if they took it all."

Key posts left unfilled

What troubles professional diplomats like Dinkelman is that when Trump doesn't appoint obnoxious ambassadors, he often appoints no ambassador at all.

About half of all U.S. ambassadors' posts are currently vacant — even though Dinkelman says there are experienced, ready and willing diplomats to take those roles.

"It's quite painful for someone like myself who spent 38 years in the diplomatic corps to see the  diminished importance of having the people on the ground where you need them, when you need them," he said.

Only 13 of 54 countries in Africa now have a U.S. ambassador. Russia has no U.S. ambassador, and neither does Ukraine.

Key allies in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, also have no ambassador. 

Instead, the U.S. has come to rely more and more on "special envoys," the most prominent of whom is a private citizen who once said he would have no role in the second Trump administration: Jared Kushner.

Kushner was unable to obtain a security clearance to work in the U.S. government until the White House interceded. Today he and New York real estate investor Steve Witkoff are the duo that conduct the most sensitive foreign affairs missions, including negotiations with Russia, Israel and Hamas, which would normally be the purview of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

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Witkoff has at times appeared to try to exclude Rubio from meetings, or speak to world leaders before Rubio can. Rubio's State Department has complained about Witkoff's use of insecure communications.

On Sunday, Kushner met with Hamas political leader Khalil al-Hayya in Egypt, and on Monday again it was Kushner, not a U.S. diplomat or even government employee, who met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

While governments might normally wish to avoid employing envoys with close personal ties to their foreign interlocutors, no such concerns seem to have impeded Kushner's role as go-between with Netanyahu, a family friend who was a guest at the their home in New Jersey and once even slept in Jared's bed.

Reporting directly to Trump, Kushner and Witkoff allow the president to circumvent the normal channels of U.S. diplomacy and restrict the circle of knowledge of what is actually being discussed and agreed upon.

"One of the biggest complaints from some of the most respected professional diplomats from this nation is that the diplomats are not even in the room when decisions are being made or negotiations are taking place," said Dinkelman.

"That speaks volumes."