An ambassador, a petition and 213,000 signatures

You have to admit, they have a point.

As of 7 a.m. on Monday, 209,909 Canadians had signed it. By 9:41 a.m., that number had reached 211,846. By 10:54 a.m., 213,124. And there are months left to sign.

It is an electronic petition to have the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, ousted and sent back to Trump’s America.

The reasons? Well, ambassadors are meant to represent the national positions of their governments and you could argue that Hoekstra is doing exactly that: his blunt pronouncements on things such as Canadian sovereignty sound very much like the words of one Donald Trump, President of the United States.

Hoekstra isn’t so much a diplomat, trying to build a rapport with Canada and Canadians, as he is a faithful echo of his master’s voice. He doesn’t so much collect and analyze the views of Canadians and share them with the Trump administration; his forte seems to be lecturing Canadians about what they should and shouldn’t be doing.

It’s a father-knows-best approach that many American officials have taken with foreign nations.

That, of course, merely makes Hoekstra an irritation.

That being said, ambassadors have a particular role to play: in exchange for a variety of protections and privileges, they’re not supposed to tamper in the internal politics of the nations they operate in.

The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations came into force in 1964: 193 countries recognize it, including the United States. It spells out clearly the specific roles diplomats are supposed to have.

One part of the convention? Article 41: “Without prejudice to their privileges and immunities, it is the duty of all persons enjoying such privileges and immunities to respect the laws and regulations of the receiving state. They have a duty not to interfere in the internal affairs of that state.”

Hoekstra invited convicted trucker convoy leader Tamara Lich to his Fourth of July picnic this year, an interesting and controversial invite.

He told Canadians he didn’t understand why we would be upset about U.S. President Donald Trump referring to Canada as the 51st state.

“Here, I’ll just get myself in trouble,” he told an Ottawa conference last November. “I go around the country and people will say, ‘Pete, you just don’t understand why we’re so mad about the 51st state.’ Yeah, you’re right. I don’t.”

He’s loosely connected to a Michigan voting initiative that Alberta separatists want to copy — though Hoekstra says he knows nothing about that, and, further, says he wasn’t involved in meetings between Alberta separatists looking for American support and U.S. State Department officials.

Will the petition work? Well, probably not.

The petition asks the federal government to “formally declare Pete Hoekstra persona non grata and request his removal as U.S. Ambassador to Canada; raise with the United States the pattern of conduct by Ambassador Hoekstra inconsistent with the Vienna convention on Diplomatic Relations; and direct a parliamentary committee to review U.S. diplomatic interference in Canadian domestic affairs.”

At a time when free trade deals and tariffs are front and centre with the Canadian government, adding diplomatic fuel to the fire seems hardly likely.

But as a way to vent Canadian frustration with an archetypal “ugly American”?

Seems like as good a way as any.

A humorous aside?

A New York Times story on the petition had over 700 comments, most of which supported Canadians in their request to oust the ambassador.

Hoekstra is a longtime Michigan Republican: a reader from Battle Creek, Mich., wrote: “My only objection to Hoekstra’s being dismissed is that he will come back to Michigan.”