Canadian military families and veterans demand apology from Trump officials

Canadian PM Carney accuses Trump, Hegseth of doing memes

Canadian veterans of the war in Afghanistan and family members of those killed in the conflict are publicly pressing US officials for an apology after a series of remarks by Trump administration figures that the families said belittled Canada’s military contributions and the Canadians who died alongside American troops.

Perry Chalmers, a former corporal in the Royal Canadian Regiment’s specialized mortar platoon who deployed to Afghanistan for a nine-month tour of combat duty alongside the US Army’s 10th Mountain Division, said the comments amounted to a betrayal of Canadians who had fought and died with the US military.

“It’s disrespect and betrayal,” Chalmers told The Guardian. “It makes me very angry.”

Chalmers, who served as a counter-IED engineer dealing with improvised explosives in conjunction with the 10th Mountain Division, said his experience in the US-led war was defined by a sense of partnership. “My experience was that we were participating in an operation to help our brothers and sisters in the United States,” he said. “None of them ever snubbed their noses at us. We were treated as equals, and respected, for what we brought to the table.”

Chris Banks, a retired Canadian army sergeant with nearly two decades of service who deployed to Afghanistan in 2008, was particularly pointed about Vance, the vice president, who served in the US military. “It’s really hard to hear how ungrateful they are, especially Vance, who served,” Banks said. “To hear him spit on our sacrifice is insulting, it’s hurtful, and it’s disrespectful to the dead. On the other hand, these men have proven themselves nothing more than children. So when I heard JD Vance say it, it’s like, ‘Oh, good. Dumbass said something else’.”

Banks said he was part of a Canadian platoon that laid down cover fire for Americans under attack from the Taliban, recalling a moment in which Canadian and American platoons took cover together in a ditch near Pashmul, looking up as trees overhead were shredded by shrapnel. He came home to Ontario in 2009, he said, and began drinking heavily — sometimes as much as a litre of vodka a day — and struggling with suicidal thoughts. He received treatment, he said, and now advocates for the mental health and wellbeing of other Canadian veterans.

“I lost a part of myself,” Banks said. “In that war we fought, for them.”

The remarks drawing fire include Vance’s recent comment that while Canada is “a state,” it “had underinvested in its military that quite literally would get invaded by a foreign country were it not for the umbrella of protection provided by the United States of America.” Duffy, the transportation secretary, told Fox News that Canada “doesn’t have a military.” Hegseth, who styles himself “secretary of war,” spent time on X mocking Canadian cadets and criticizing a Canadian coast guard detachment for taking part in a Pride celebration. Trump was criticized earlier in 2026 for claiming that Canadian and other NATO forces in Afghanistan were “never needed” and that these allies “stayed a little back, a little off the frontlines.”

Nancy Payne, the mother of Corporal Randy Payne, said the comments have changed how she views the relationship between the two countries. Her son served with a military police close-protection team based in Wainwright, Alberta, charged with safeguarding high-ranking officers, government officials and other VIPs in war zones. On April 22, 2006, an armored vehicle triggered a roadside bomb outside Kandahar airbase, killing Payne and three other Canadian soldiers — the deadliest single attack on Canadian forces in Afghanistan since 2002, when four Canadian soldiers were killed in a friendly-fire incident at the Tarnak Farms training facility.

Payne, speaking by phone from her home in Lansdowne, Ontario, said she was at home, alone, when the phone rang in the dead of night. It was her son’s commanding officer. “When you get a call at three in the morning from Randy’s boss, you know it’s not good news,” she recalled. “I just kept saying ‘Not my Randy … not my Randy’.” In 2025, the Royal Canadian Legion awarded her a Silver Cross, a commendation for Canadian military mothers, and she laid a wreath at the national war memorial during the Remembrance Day ceremony in Ottawa. “What they’re saying is not right,” she said of the US officials. “We were neighbours for so long. That’s all changed, now.”

Jane McKay, the mother of deceased Master Corporal Tim Wilson, published an op-ed in the Toronto Sun taking aim at the Trump administration. “Trump has no respect for any soldier — American, or Canadian, or those from the Nato alliance,” she wrote. “He owes them all an apology.”

Canadian officials joined in the criticism at the highest levels of government. Prime Minister Carney accused Trump and Hegseth of “doing memes.” Defense Minister McGuinty described Hegseth’s social media posts as “below the dignity of the office he holds.”

Some US politicians sought to make amends. On September 1, Arizona Democratic Senator Rueben Gallego traveled to Ottawa on an official congressional trip aimed at strengthening weakening trade relations between the two countries, and singled out Hegseth’s anti-Canadian military tweets as “deeply disrespectful to the men and women of Canada that have died fighting with us,” The Guardian reported.

Chalmers, Banks and other veterans described how the dispute has altered their relationships with the United States. Chalmers said he used to play tabletop strategy games with a group of civilian friends in the US via the online social platform Discord, but ended the practice when they laughed off his concerns about Trump’s talk of Canada becoming the “51st state.” Banks said he used to routinely take his family across the border for vacations and stateside shopping trips. “I loved working with Americans, I loved training with them,” he said. “But now it’s hard to have that same level of empathy.”

Asked whether he would eagerly enlist to help the US again, Banks said the calculation has changed. “What would happen if there was another hypothetical 9/11?” he said. “I hate to say it, but why would any nation, ever again, partner with the United States, if this is how they treat their closest neighbour and ally?”

Canada’s military history alongside the United States stretches back decades. About 14,000 Canadians landed on Juno Beach in Normandy on D-Day during World War II. More than 26,000 Canadians served in the Korean War. While Canada did not officially participate in the Vietnam War, an estimated 30,000 Canadians crossed the border to volunteer for the US military. In Afghanistan, more than 40,000 members of the Canadian Armed Forces served in support of US and NATO operations; 158 were killed. In 2007, a stretch of Ontario’s Highway 401 was rechristened the “Highway of Heroes” to commemorate the convoys of fallen soldiers ferried between the military base in Trenton, Ontario, and the coroner’s office in Toronto.

Chalmers said that on the morning of September 11, 2001, his battalion was put on notice and dispatched to nearby airports to assist in the forced landings of commercial aircraft after the shutdown of North American airspace. He counted 35 fellow Canadian troops who lost their lives in the war. “I never really brooked any regrets, or bad feelings, about my role in the US-led war,” he said. That, he added, has now changed.