U.S. ambassador asked about future of Canadians at Harvard — including PM's daughter
U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra spoke at an event on Tuesday organized by the Empire Club of Canada. In conversation with Global Investment Banking at CIBC Capital Markets Vice-Chair Lisa Raitt, he discussed Canada-U.S. relations and responded to a question about the future of Canadians trying to go to Harvard — including Prime Minister Mark Carney’s daughter Cleo Carney.
The event came after the Trump administration revoked Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students. “They have lost their Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification as a result of their failure to adhere to the law,” said Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in a post on X . “This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus.”
Carney’s daughter is expected to return to Harvard as a second-year student in September, where she is earning a bachelor’s in economics . This was brought up by Raitt, who asked Hoekstra about it on Tuesday near the end of their conversation.
“Any thoughts or any words for Canadians who may be trying to go to Harvard right now, like maybe the prime minister’s daughter?” said Raitt.
“Well, I mean, you know the what the U.S. is doing? OK, we cleaned up the border. We’re now tracking down people who are murderers, thieves and rapists, who are in the country illegally, and doing everything to get them out of the country and make America safe,” said Hoekstra. “When I was on the intel committee, I would get briefed regularly by the FBI about students from China in our universities who are — and our research institutions — who are stealing our technology or our research, sending it back to China. They would patent it before it ever came out of our research institutions.”
He said that U.S. President Donald Trump was “cleaning up that mess.”
“We recognize that American universities, and probably Canadian universities, are phenomenal bastions of knowledge — OK? — that our enemies want to have access to. This is why we have so many foreign students now. They want the knowledge, and in some cases, they want to steal our research,” he said.
“And so the president is saying, ‘No, we’re going to — we’re going to clean this up.’ We recognize the value of the commodity that we have, which are research institutions. So we still want people coming in, but we want to manage that process.”
He said that the U.S. has been “negligent” and hasn’t managed its resources well.
“We’re being exploited by those who want to destroy the United States and who want to destroy the prosperity and the security of Canada at the same time. They’re not picking and choosing. If they don’t like the U.S., I think there’s a high probability they don’t like you either,” he said.
The fate of international students who are supposed to attend Harvard remains unclear. Most recently, in May, a judge extended an order blocking the Trump administration’s ban on foreign students.
Meanwhile, in a statement on May 29, a university spokesperson said the court decision has allowed it to “continue enrolling international students and scholars while the case moves forward.”
It continued: “Harvard will continue to take steps to protect the rights of our international students and scholars, members of our community who are vital to the University’s academic mission and community — and whose presence here benefits our country immeasurably.”
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