海角社区官网

If he鈥檇 set out deliberately to inflame Canadian opinion, Hoekstra couldn鈥檛 be doing a better job of it. He鈥檚 been going on about how 鈥渄isappointed鈥� he is that Canadians have their backs up in the face of Trump鈥檚 tariffs and hostile rhetoric and lamenting the 鈥渁nti-American鈥� tone of the federal election campaign. When it comes to blatant insults like all that 鈥�51^st state鈥� talk, his advice has been blunt: 鈥淕et over it.鈥�

But being an effective diplomat doesn鈥檛 actually mean making nice all the time. Hoekstra鈥檚 actual job is to represent the president of the United States and by that definition he gets top marks. I think it鈥檚 time we stopped abusing the ambassador and started appreciating the value of having him among us, touring the country and making us come to terms with the true face of Trumpism.

A lot of Canadians are enjoying getting upset about Hoekstra鈥檚 most recent comments at an event in Halifax. 鈥淕aslighting鈥� is the description of choice 鈥� blaming us for striking back with travel boycotts and the like after Trump launched his trade war. (That鈥檚 a word, by the way, the ambassador very much objects to. 鈥淎 dangerous place to go,鈥� he says.)

But would it be better to have an oily 鈥渄iplomat鈥� fronting for Trump in this country? Would it be preferable to have someone who was all smiles and niceness while his boss conspired against us in the background?

Better to get the unvarnished truth up front and learn to deal with it. Hoekstra has played a significant role in getting the Trump administration鈥檚 message through to Canadians. In August he started talking about Canada鈥檚 retaliatory tariffs on goods covered by the CUSMA trade deal and warned they put that whole agreement at risk as it comes up for a formal review.

Barely a week later the Carney government dropped those tariffs. It was billed as a way of keeping trade talks going but there was obviously more to it than that. The government had taken on board the argument that tariffing CUSMA-covered goods undermined its longer-term goal 鈥� making sure the U.S. wants to review or even renegotiate the deal rather than just walking away from it entirely.

No doubt the government was hearing the same arguments directly in Washington during all those LeBlanc-Lutnick sessions that chewed up much of the summer. But Hoekstra surfaced the issues for a broader Canadian public.

That earned him a fair amount of abuse (including from me at one point) because it ran smack against the 鈥渆lbows up鈥� sentiment shared by so many Canadians. But the Carney team obviously saw the point, especially since retaliatory tariffs weren鈥檛 working anyway.

On a more general level Hoekstra is voicing the sense of grievance that Trump clearly feels towards the whole world. Canadians, like many other people, tend to see the U.S. as a colossus that has grown rich under a global system it did more than any other country to construct.

But Trump sees it the other way around. At the United Nations this week he whined about how other countries have taken advantage of the United States 鈥� until, of course, he came along and fixed it.

Hoekstra鈥檚 gaslighting of Canadians comes from the same place of hurt. Far from being punished by Trump鈥檚 policies, he said last week, Canada is doing better than any other country because CUSMA ensures we still have the lowest tariffs with the U.S. (an argument also pushed by Mark Carney). 鈥淵our relative position has improved,鈥� says Hoekstra, yet Canadians have turned against the United States. How ungrateful!

To be absolutely clear, I find Hoekstra鈥檚 arguments as irritating as anyone else. But I think it鈥檚 worth listening carefully to what he says because he isn鈥檛 just provoking Canadians for no good reason. He鈥檚 voicing a world view that this country must deal with 鈥� for at least the next three and a half years, and likely for much longer than that.

The better we understand, the better we can prepare to meet the challenges of that future. For that, if nothing else: thanks, Mr. Ambassador.