Colby Cosh: Based on Hoekstra’s definition, I’m a foreign election-interferer

The Ontario government's anti-U.S. tariff ad featuring a televised speech from former U.S. president Ronald Reagan. Photo by Government of Ontario

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Do you suppose I’m guilty of intervening in a foreign election? I would never have thought so, but earlier this week the American ambassador to Canada went on a Canadian podcast to warn against Canadian “interference” in U.S. midterm elections. The example that got up Pete Hoekstra’s nose furthest was apparently the Ontario government’s October 2025 Ronald Reagan-themed television ad, which ran for two weeks on the four “major” U.S. broadcast networks and ESPN’s postseason baseball coverage.

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The ad was nothing more than a (harmlessly edited) 1987 quotation from a radio editorial delivered by President Reagan. Viewers were made emphatically aware that the spot was paid for by Ontario. It accurately expressed Reagan’s core beliefs, in Reagan’s own voice, about the virtue and importance of international free trade. If the ad had quoted almost any other historic statesman, listeners would be safe in assuming that it had been written by someone else, possibly for ephemeral reasons of partisan advantage. But this is Reagan, and that wasn’t his style: his creation and use of radio editorials are practically their own field of historical (and poli-sci) study.

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In other words, Ontario made a revered American statesman speak from the grave, with undoubted sincerity, on an urgent contemporary issue. Canadians are, apparently, supposed to feel bad about this: it might be “foreign election interference.” This simply reminded me that talk of “foreign election interference” annoys the living hell out of me. It’s a category that some social scientist or historian will figure out how to break into usable components, into well-defined words conducive to the underlying problem. For now, it’s used for name-calling and race-baiting as often as for any other purpose.

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The phrase “election interference,” at one extreme, includes violence, kidnapping and criminal intimidation by foreign agents. (In this manifestation, it’s a problem that Canada has a lot more of than the United States, but it’s merely one aspect of a wider “the state won’t solve, address or even just oppose crime” problem.) It can include political corruption and foreign compromise of officials and legislators. But at the other end of the spectrum, “interference” might and does include lots of open, fair, ethical, democratic persuasive activity like the Reagan ad. It seems to me this kind of thing ought to be welcomed among sovereign states as a healthy alternative to espionage, corruption and media conspiracy.

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Did Ontario create the ad intending to shift American votes and political sentiment? Of course. Is there anything reasonable for an American to object to about the ad, given its explicit and friendly foreign provenance? I’m damned if I can see it. It is for Americans to judge whether to be convinced by purely persuasive appeals from legitimate foreign interests that declare themselves as such. In the case of the Reagan ad, no Canadian person is heard from or quoted at all. The damn thing is practically an “American Heritage Minute” paid for by Canadians. Me, I was never happier to see a government dollar spent.