Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Justin Pierre James TrudeauCanada says former ambassador to US violated conflict-of-interest law No new Canadian COVID-19 deaths reported for first time since mid-March Trudeau announces millions for first 'Black Entrepreneurship Program' MORE on Monday condemned President Trump Donald John TrumpSteele Dossier sub-source was subject of FBI counterintelligence probe Pelosi slams Trump executive order on pre-existing conditions: It 'isn't worth the paper it's signed on' Trump 'no longer angry' at Romney because of Supreme Court stance MORE for telling a group of female minority lawmakers to go back to the "crime infested places" they came from, saying that that is not how things are done in Canada.

"I think Canadians and indeed people around the world know exactly what I think about those particular comments," Trudeau said during a joint press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. "That is not how we do things in Canada. A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian. The diversity of our country is actually one of our greatest strengths and a source of tremendous resilience and pride for Canadians and we will to continue to defend that."

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Trudeau did not address whether he thought Trump's latest statements were racist, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation noted.

Trump on Sunday sparked an uproar after telling four freshman House Democrats on Twitter to "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came" before speaking out about how the United States government should be run.

The president also claimed that the progressive Democrats "came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe."

He did not identify the lawmakers in his tweet. But the comments came amid a week of rising tensions between Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Reps. Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (Mass.).

Several Democratic and Republican lawmakers derided the comments as xenophobic and racist. Pelosi on Monday urged House Democrats to back a formal resolution condemning Trump's remarks.

Trump has meanwhile defended his statements about the congresswomen, accusing them of hating the U.S.

"They can leave. And you know what? I’m sure there will be many people that won’t miss them. But they have to love our country. They’re congresspeople,” he said.

The four congresswomen he targeted roundly rejected Trump's statements in a press conference late Monday night. Omar called the tweets "blatantly racist," adding that they were comparable to the "agenda of white nationalists."