Justin Trudeau requires an intervention. A friend needs to tell him his obsession with Venezuela has led him down a path of misery, destruction and failure.
During a call on Monday with Chilean president Sebastia'n Pià ±era Trudeau again raised "the situation in Venezuela", according to the official readout. Amidst massive demonstrations against Pinera in October, Trudeau also called to discuss Venezuela as he did in February 2018 and previously . Trudeau has also discussed Venezuela with the US, Colombian and other hemispheric presidents on multiple occasions.
Further afield, the PM has talked to the leaders of Japan, France, Spain, Austria, Ireland and Italy as well as the International Monetary Fund and European Union to convince them to join Canada's campaign against Venezuela. A search of the prime minister's press releases found 144 references to Venezuela. Conversely, there are four mentions of Bolivia, six of El Salvador and 31 of Venezuela's much larger neighbour Brazil (14 of which are related to the 2016 Olympics/Paralympics in Brazil and others to meetings about Venezuela).
Trudeau's Venezuela obsession is shared throughout the government. Global Affairs has put out hundreds of statements and tweets about Venezuela over the past three years. On Friday foreign minister Franà §ois-Philippe Champagne released a statement and tweeted at Juan Guaidà ³ a "call for the establishment of a transitional government in Venezuela." In response, US journalist Ben Norton tweeted, "Canada's woke Liberal government will condescendingly correct you for using the word 'mankind' while simultaneously trying to organize a right-wing coup to overthrow Venezuela's democratically elected leftist government. Intersectional imperialism."
A recently released Access to Information request highlights Canada's role in Juan Guaidà ³'s declaring himself president. Fourteen days before the new head of the opposition-dominated National Assembly declared himself interim president on January 23, 2019, then foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland had a phone meeting with Guaidà ³. According to a partly redacted Access to Information request submitted by Canadian Foreign Policy Institute fellow Tamara Lorincz, the talking points for the conversation reveal that "with Canada's support, Juan Guaidà ³ was invited to deliver a presentation on this [self-declaration] at the Lima Group National Co-ordinators meeting on December 19", 2018. The documents confirm the central role Canadian diplomats played in the US-backed plan to ratchet up tensions by claiming a relatively marginal National Assembly member was Venezuela's president. At the time the Associated Press reported on Canada's "key role" in building international diplomatic support for Guaidà ³ while the Canadian Press noted that Canadian diplomats spent "months" coordinating the plan with the hard-line opposition.
In the fall of 2017, the government hired a pro-corporate, pro-Washington, former diplomat to coordinate their bid to oust Venezuela's government. Canadian taxpayers have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Special Advisor on Venezuela Allan Culham, who was hostile to Hugo Chavez during his time as Canadian ambassador to Venezuela from 2002 to 2005.
But, the effort is a failure. As Arnold August recently pointed out, the pro-Guaidà ³ international coalition is fraying with Guaidà ³'s National Assembly mandate expiring in a few months. Similarly, top Democrats are increasingly stressing the failure of US policy. Yet the Trudeau government doesn't appear to have any plan to get out of this political downward spiral.
The campaign to overthrow Venezuela's government is unprecedented in Canadian foreign policy history. But, so is the reaction. Venezuela's public lobbying contributed to Canada's defeat in its bid for a seat on the Security Council in June. On Thursday Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza will present on "Canadian Interference in Venezuela." As this article points out, a sitting foreign minister for a country of 30 million talking directly to Canadians about Ottawa's bid to overthrow his government is unprecedented in Canadian foreign policy history. Adding further intrigue to this exciting event, Pink Floyd founder, Roger Waters, will also be making an appearance.
While the hypocrisy of the Liberals is not unprecedented, the campaign against Venezuela is startling in its imperialist pretensions. Across the region the Trudeau government has largely ignored human rights violations committed by pro corporate/Washington governments. They've said little about hundreds of killings by regimes they backed in Haiti, Honduras, Bolivia, Chile and Colombia. Nor have they said much about flagrant violations of the constitutions or democratic norms in Haiti, Brazil and Honduras.
A few brave and principled Canadians need to take Trudeau aside and tell him his Venezuela obsession can only lead to more embarrassment and a permanent stain on this country's reputation. Is doing Donald Trump's dirty work worth it?
