That was quite the interview minister of energy and natural resources Tim Hodgson gave to La Presse in the last days before Christmas. “This document is an alarm signal,” Hodgson told Joël-Denis Bellavance, referring to the Donald Trump administration’s National Security Strategy.

Hodgson carried a heavily marked-up copy of the United States document into his meeting with La Presse and “took the time to read some extracts from the document out loud” during the interview, Bellavance notes. These included references to a “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine,” the intention to “deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to . . . own or control strategically vital assets in our Hemisphere,” and the use of America’s military in “establishing or expanding access in strategically important locations.”

“We know what the Monroe Doctrine means,” Hodgson said. “That’s like America’s manifest destiny. What’s manifest destiny? It’s the belief that the United States is destined to rule the Americas. That’s the world we live in today.

“We live in a world where we are regularly told we should be the fifty-first state. It is a world where Denmark is being asked to relinquish its territorial sovereignty. We live in a world where authoritarian leaders believe they can change Ukraine’s borders by force. We live in a world where China has made it clear that it intends to annex Taiwan by force, if necessary. We live in an extremely difficult world. We must deal with it. The trade war has been imposed on us, and we must respond.”

I still haven’t really figured Hodgson out. But it’s probably significant, since he’s Prime Minister Mark Carney’s star cabinet recruit, that he spends time using a highlighter on the bits of the neighbours’ policy bible that mention “strategically vital assets” and “strategically important locations.” Keeping an eye on the neighbours is probably a good idea. In the same week that La Presse published the Hodgson interview, US President Trump appointed Louisiana governor Jeff Landry to, as Landry wrote on X, “make Greenland a part of the US.” Later the same day, Trump unveiled plans for a new “Trump class” of battleships and warned the Venezuelan regime of Nicolás Maduro not to “play tough” as US naval vessels commandeer Venezuelan tanker after tanker. (Canada also rejects Maduro’s claim to govern Venezuela legitimately, although more mildly.)

I doubt Trump’s administration has short-term plans to treat Canada the way it’s been treating Greenland and Venezuela. But it doesn’t feel like the safest bet I could possibly make. And in the meantime, they simply don’t seem like reliable neighbours. Much of our politics in 2025 was about how to respond. That will surely continue through 2026.

In some ways it’s obvious how to respond to a changing US. (i)........

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