When U.S. diplomacy wears out its welcome

“We have reached a point where our relations must be based on something more solid than accommodation to (the) neurotic Canadian view of us and (the) world. We should be less the accoucheur of Canada’s illusions.”

— Walt Butterworth, U.S. ambassador to Canada, 1962-1968

It is a testament to the generally civil and co-operative nature of U.S.-Canada relations that our two nations have maintained an undefended border for more than a century.

Although Canada and the United States have had diplomats in each other’s territory since the 1920s, history records that the first person to hold the rank of U.S. Ambassador to Canada was Ray Atherton, whose title was elevated when the post was upgraded to embassy status in 1943.

And for the last 80-plus years, the tenures of U.S. ambassadors to Canada have generally been characterized by mutual respect and professionalism, even when governments of the day found themselves on conflicting sides of an issue.

Since Mr. Atherton’s stint as U.S. ambassador, more than 40 individuals have served in the role, generally without incident. And in all of those eight decades, no U.S. ambassador to Canada has ever been expelled.

Of course, there have been tensions. Not all American administrations have seen eye to eye with their Canadian counterparts, and the reverse is also very true. For example, when the Republican government of George W. Bush was pushing for allies to invade Iraq following the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien ordered that Canada’s participation in any coalition against Iraq would be contingent upon having the support of the United Nations — which never came.

While that decision cooled relations between the two governments, it was not due to any particular diplomatic failures on the part of the U.S. ambassador of the day.

Historically, Walton Butterworth would have held title of possibly the “worst” U.S. diplomat to be appointed as ambassador to Canada. Butterworth, a career diplomat from Louisiana under the John F. Kennedy administration, referred to Canadians as “neurotic” and “psychotic” in correspondence back to Washington.

Butterworth was arrogant, and “highly obnoxious,” according to Carleton University historian Stephen Azzi, who was quoted in a 2017 article in the Ottawa Citizen.

“This was a man who had total confidence in his own abilities, an overbearing personality and it just did not work for the American ambassador to carry that degree of arrogance in his dealings with Canadians,” Azzi said. “It caused a lot of problems in the 1960s.”

In his time as U.S. ambassador, Butterworth would echo the worst sentiments of then-president Kennedy, who considered Canada to be suffering from some form of mental illness under the government of John Diefenbaker.

In his 2018 history paper entitled “Reassessing the rogue Tory: Canadian foreign relations in the Diefenbaker era,” Azzi wrote that from the beginning of the Cold War, Washington dismissed any disagreements as the “product of irrationality” rather than of often-legitimate policy differences.

“This culture impeded U.S. relations with the government of John Diefenbaker, preventing several key U.S. officials from grasping that Canada might reasonably want to diverge slightly from the American position,” Azzi wrote.

It has taken considerable time, but Canada is slowly but surely coming into its own on the world stage. Even just this week, Canada was ranked as the most “loved” or admired country in the world, according to the Reputation Institute’s global survey and World Atlas rankings for 2025.

That trend has accelerated in this past year thanks in large part to the caustic and ignorant remarks coming out of the mouth of U.S. President Donald Trump, whose “Canada as the 51st state” rhetoric has gone over like a lead balloon.

And his diplomatic mouthpiece here in Canada, U.S. ambassador Pete Hoekstra, has leaned into that undiplomatic behaviour since his appointment in April.

In just the last several months, Hoekstra has called Canada’s federal election an “anti-American campaign,” labelled Canadian boycott of U.S. goods and avoidance of travel to our southern neighbour as “nasty,” and accused Canada of meddling in U.S. politics over an anti-tariff ad campaign from Ontario that used a clip of Ronald Reagan.

In fact, Hoekstra reportedly launched an expletive-filled tirade at Ontario’s trade representative in Washington over the ad.

He’s not one for subtlety — or even diplomacy.

And just this week, Hoekstra has issued a veiled threat to Ottawa, suggesting that the future of Canada-U.S. trade talks will depend on how Canada’s review of its decision to buy U.S.-made F-35 fighter jets turns out, according to a report by the Toronto Star.

Canada is currently considering other jet options, particularly the Gripen fighter jet from Sweden’s Saab.

All things considered, it’s hard not to conclude that America’s ambassador to Canada has a bully complex, like his president. And it’s becoming increasingly difficult for the Carney government to ignore the fact that Canadian sentiment against him is growing. Point of fact, a petition on change.org that calls for the removal of Pete Hoekstra as U.S. ambassador to Canada started on Sept. 28 currently has 15,725 signatures.

It must be said that expelling Hoekstra from Canada would likely put the final nail in the coffin for Trump-Carney relations, and end any hope of procuring a fair trade deal with the current U.S. administration after CUSMA ends next year.

But it’s a fair question to ask: at what point does Canada decide that Mr. Hoekstra has worn out his welcome?