“ Canada is a sovereign state, yes ,” Pete Hoekstra told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He’s a former congressman who served as U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands in President Donald Trump ’s first term.

Both Canada and Greenland, which is included in NATO as the territory of founding member Denmark, were raised during an informal press conference in the Oval Office. In the meeting, Trump also applied new pressure on the trans-Atlantic alliance to spend more on its collective defense.