'Cheese slipped off the cracker': Ford calls on U.S. ambassador to apologize for profane rant against Ontario official
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has called on U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra to apologize for shouting and cursing at Ontario’s trade representative to the United States.
“The cheese slipped off the cracker, I get it. You’re ticked off, but call the guy up,” Ford told reporters at a press conference on Wednesday morning.
Ford said Hoekstra’s behaviour at an event Monday night in Ottawa was “unbecoming of an ambassador” and said Hoekstra should phone David Paterson, Ontario’s trade representative to the United States.
“People get hot, they get heated — I get heated sometimes — just call the guy up and bury the hatchet,” Ford said.
The full details of what Hoekstra said have yet to be reported, but the comments were apparently laced with profanities, including the f-word, according to news reports. Paterson, a former senior executive with General Motors Canada, was appointed to his position in December 2023.
The incident occurred at an event to debate the Canada-U.S. trade relationship, at the annual Canadian American Business Council gala held at the National Gallery in Ottawa. Anonymous sources told a number of publications that Hoekstra was seen tearing into Paterson over the Ontario government’s ad that ran excerpts of a 1987 radio address from then U.S. president Ronald Reagan, in which he decries tariffs.
Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand was asked about Hoekstra’s tirade on Wednesday, but declined to answer directly.
“I know that Dominic LeBlanc is working very hard on this file,” said Anand, referring to the minister responsible for Canada-U.S. trade. “I would like — we want to see an agreement when we can get it.”
In response to a reporter’s question, Anand also said that the Canadian government had not summoned Hoekstra to account for his behaviour. When pressed, she would not say if Canada planned to do so.
In an emailed message, Gabriel Brunet, LeBlanc’s press secretary, said, “We will not comment on this matter.”
The ad, which has since been pulled from the air, drew the ire of U.S. President Donald Trump, who said he would increase tariffs on Canadians goods by 10 per cent and called off trade talks with Canada. On TruthSocial, his social media platform, Trump wrote that “Canada was caught, red handed, putting up a fraudulent advertisement on Ronald Reagan’s Speech on Tariffs.”
“Ronald Reagan LOVED Tariffs for purposes of National Security and the Economy, but Canada said he didn’t!” Trump wrote.
Reagan is widely seen as a fervent believer in the benefits of free trade. In the ad, he says of tariffs that “over the long run, such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer.”
Ford has continued to defend the ad. “Ronald Reagan is telling the truth. A tariff on Canada is a tax on American people,” said Ford.
“What do they expect me to do? Sit back and roll over like every other person in the world? I’m going to fight like I’ve never fought before,” Ford said Wednesday. “Man, was it the right thing to do. It started a conversation like I’ve never seen before.”
Yet, Ford also told reporters that his intention wasn’t to “poke the president in the eye” but that his intention was to “get a conversation going.”
Canadians “love Americans. We don’t love President Trump, I’ll tell you that,” he said.
“Why doesn’t the president start being nice, playing nice in the sandbox?”
The Wall Street Journal, on Wednesday, ran a letter to the editor from Ford, in which he addresses the ad controversy. Tariffs, he wrote, are “driving a wedge between Canadians and Americans when we need to be united against external threats from such adversaries as Russia and China.”
“Mr. Trump called our ad a ‘hostile act,’ but it was meant as an encouragement to embrace what has made our nations great,” Ford wrote.
Paterson and the U.S. embassy in Ottawa did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
With additional reporting by Bloomberg News and the Toronto Sun
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