If you parse Marco Rubio’s statement from last weekend, anyone who is even a competitor of the U.S. in our hemisphere is a potential target of American foreign policy attention. No wonder Prime Minister Mark Carney has muted his comments on the Nicolás Maduro takedown. We could be next.
By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on January 12, 2026.
OTTAWA—The American military move to arrest Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has put the world on edge.
By invading Ukraine, Russia was the only state actor to ignore international law, but not anymore. The People’s Republic of China can point to the move by United States President Donald Trump as a template to take out the Taiwanese leadership.
Trump has not ruled out sending in the U.S. military to Venezuela, but insists that he wants to work with the president who was sworn in as soon as Maduro was spirited out of the country.
In his hour-long press conference extolling the Maduro capture, Trump left the distinct impression that he had a deal with the new president, Delcy Rodriguez. Meanwhile, she was on Venezuelan state television decrying the move and saying that never again would Venezuelans be enslaved by others.
As the world waits for what comes next, countries in the Americas are girding for more moves by Trump to establish his dream country.
Colombia has summoned thousands of its military force to prevent any spillover on its 2,219-kilometre shared border with Venezuela.
Mexico and Canada are breathing hard because Trump will not stop until he is stopped. Even in Washington, the Democrats are confused in their political response. Some have accused Trump of breaking the law while others point to the fact that Maduro has had a warrant out for his arrest since 2020.
Canada’s response has been equally confusing. While the prime minister lauded the fact that Maduro is out of the picture, he did little to dissuade the president from exercising future takeover powers on Canadian soil.
Trump is exercising a power he claims derives from the Monroe Doctrine. He has renamed it the “Donroe Doctrine,” citing the authority of the United States to exercise influence throughout the Western Hemisphere based on an 1823 declaration. According to Donroe, the U.S. has the right to do pretty much anything it wants if it feels under threat in the region. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio repeated the “Donroe Doctrine” last weekend, stating “This is the Western Hemisphere. This is where we live—and we’re not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operation for adversaries, competitors and rivals of the United States.”
If anything, the Maduro capture will embolden Trump when it comes to his plans for Greenland and Canada.
Realistically, if he thought he could get away with annexing both, he would.
The president has already made statements about how the United States needs Greenland for security reasons.
In this instance, we are witnessing the reality of life imitating art.
Trump has been slumping badly domestically because of challenging economic times and rising costs.
One of Canada’s greatest comedic actors, John Candy, participated in a film, Canadian Bacon, where the U.S. president convinced blue-collar workers to invade Canada.
The war strategy was designed to take attention away from woes at home. Released in 1995, the film was Candy’s last and was directed by Michael Moore, a well-known documentary filmmaker. The plot of Canadian Bacon is that the invasion led to a series of crazy encounters with polite Canadian Mounted Police and much ado about maple syrup and moose. In the case of Candy, the invasion was a comedic success.
Trump could be imitating art in this case. A successful Maduro seizure could embolden him to reach out to other areas that he would like to annex, including Greenland and Canada.
In the case of Greenland, it is getting elbows up with Denmark in an effort to protect its sovereignty while Trump is claiming that the U.S. needs to own it because of the strategic location in the North Atlantic.
As for Canada, we all know that the president has already said he would like to weaken us economically, and he is doing everything in his power to do so. He has ruled out an invasion, but if you parse Rubio’s weekend television statement, anyone who is even a competitor of the U.S. in our hemisphere is a potential target of American foreign policy attention.
Where does that put our country if the Canada-U.S.-Mexico is not renewed and we become competitors in many former areas of free trade?
No wonder Prime Minister Mark Carney has muted his comments on the Maduro takedown. We could be next.
And the only way to prevent that is to make sure that Trump’s sights are focused elsewhere and not on his neighbour to the North.
Canadian Bacon was funny. This is not.
Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.