U.S. Ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, says that Canadian politicians are being closely watched for signs of election interference ahead of the American Midterms. In a podcast interview, Hoekstra warned Canadian politicians to “keep their nose out” of American political issues.
During the interview, Hoekstra specifically cited Canada’s strategic implementation of retaliatory tariff strategy as it was described by Canadian Industry Minister Mélanie Joly.
“We’re also targeting products that will target states in the U.S., and so we’re being wise and strategic to put political pressure.”
Ambassador Hoekstra suggesting that Minister Joley’s comments could be seen as amounting to American political interference in the face of Midterm elections.
“We are closely watching Canadian activities because it appears that some of this, from our perspective in the way that we view our elections, could be inferred to be election interference. Minister Joly talking about, ‘of course we’re going to go and target tariffs and retaliatory tariffs’ in politically sensitive states.”
Joly pushed back on Hoekstra’s comments, saying that Canada would never engage in election interference as Canada would “never accept that being done to us in Canada.”
“We’d never do that, and we’d never accept that in Canada. Indeed, I’ve been to the U.S. in the past months. I’ve been to Boston, I’ve been to Illinois, and also Florida, meeting with state representatives. I’ve engaged with Democrats and Republicans. Fundamentally, what I’ve done in the U.S. is to attract investments to Canada. And that’s exactly what I’m doing, and that will continue to be my strategy in the U.S. and also around the world.”
A former Canadian diplomat is dismissing any allegations of Canadian interference in U.S. elections as just noise. Colin Robertson was a diplomat stationed in Washington at the Canadian embassy and is currently a fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.
“I don’t think in any way that we are breaking American laws. Criticism of Melanie Joly is that we have targeted tariffs specifically to constituencies in the United States. Did that constitute any kind of interference? No, I think that’s advocacy. It’s quite justified.”