It's much more than just an ignorant statement. The US is actively supporting the secessionist movement in Canada. The State Department has met with the leaders if the Alberta secessionist movement in Washington to support them and told them they would immediately recognize Alberta as a country when the time comes. No doubt there is funding flowing to the secessionist movement from the US. Bessent is also not just some innocent guy pushing numbers around for the economy. He admitted to engineering the currency crash in Iran as part of their regime change plan and called it "economic statecraft."

The US is working to undermine Canadian sovereignty. This is the same bullshit the CIA does around the world, and they've been working on it for a while in Alberta.