Petition to kick out U.S. ambassador reaches nearly 30,000 signatures

A petition to remove U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra from the country has reached nearly 30,000 signatures.

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The online petition, set for presentation in the House of Commons in the fall, says Hoekstra, U.S. President Donald Trump’s representative in Ottawa, ought to be declared persona non grata and the federal government should request his removal as U.S. ambassador.

Green Leader Elizabeth May will present the petition, which was launched by a Calgary woman.

The petition accuses Hoekstra of unduly interfering in Canadian politics and making statements “inconsistent with diplomatic protocol.” It says he undermined Canada-U.S. relations, characterizing the 2025 federal election as “anti-American” and normalizing Trump’s threats to annex Canada as the “51st state.”

Most notably, the petition suggests that he egged on the Alberta separatist movement. Specifically, the petition alleges representatives of the Alberta Prosperity Project, an independence movement, met with U.S. State Department officials three times between April 2025 and January and that Hoekstra said he had no knowledge of those meetings. The petition also attempts to link Hoekstra to a Michigan-based voter identification app used by another Alberta sovereignty group, The Centurion Project.

The petition also calls for a parliamentary review of what it calls U.S. diplomatic interference in Canadian affairs.

It’s true that Hoekstra has voiced his opinion over a number of issues that affect Canada-U.S. relations, though whether or not such opinions undermine them could be debated. He’s specifically called out Canadian bans on American liquor, calling them “kind of backwards” and a major irritant in U.S.-Canada trade deal talks.

“That’s kind of backwards to me and if Canadians can explain that logic to me, I can’t understand it. We buy 93% of your exports and you ban ours,” Hoekstra told Michael LeBlanc and Sylvain Charlebois on the Food Professor podcast, adding the only two provinces that don’t ban U.S. booze are Alberta and Saskatchewan.

The U.S. Embassy told media it was aware of the petition, but didn’t comment any further.

A “persona non grata” declaration allows a government, according to the UN’s Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, to strip diplomatic immunity from an individual and force them to leave the country. Canada has done so in the past, most recently with Chinese and Indian officials over allegations of foreign interference.

Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei was given the boot in 2023 after an intelligence report said he targeted MP Michael Chong by investigating family members living in Hong Kong.

The next year, Canada kicked out six Indian diplomats and consular officials after the RCMP alleged agents of India’s government targeted Canadian citizens. That campaign, police said, was linked to the murder of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, B.C., allegedly at the behest of Indian gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, according to U.S. authorities.