Opportunities to promote human rights and democratic values abroad: The case of Canadian foreign policy toward Venezuela

Abstract

This article examines Canadian foreign policy toward Venezuela, as a litmus test of Ottawa’s promise to project a consistently strong voice for the protection of human rights and the advancement of democratic values in the world. The case is made that Canada is more likely to gear up to an assertive approach if there is a perception that there is an opportunity for democratization in the country, and for policymakers in Ottawa, if there is an opportunity to prioritize human rights and democracy, as opposed to more traditional national interest objectives. The article offers an explanation about when and how Canada typically promotes its liberal values abroad.

This article examines Canadian foreign policy toward Venezuela, as a litmus test of Ottawa’s promise to project “a consistently strong voice for the protection of human rights and the advancement of democratic values” in the world. ¹

Beginning under Canada’s twenty-second prime minister Stephen Harper (6 February 2006 to 4 November 2015), but reaching new heights under Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, Ottawa has been exceptionally steadfast in its defence of human rights and democracy (henceforth HRD) in Venezuela. This policy unfolded in response to the worsening of the humanitarian, economic, and political crisis in this country over the past few years.

While one can trace the roots of this crisis back to the presidency of Hugo Chávez (1999–2013), who was democratically elected for the first time in 1998, the deterioration was gradual under his rule but truly intensified under his successor in Miraflores, his former minister of foreign affairs and “yes-man” Nicolás Maduro (2013–). ² Chávez died in March of 2013, and Maduro managed to win a close presidential election in April. Since then, the country has descended into conditions normally associated with state failure and civil war.

Canada was a founding member of the Lima Group, an ad hoc coalition established on 8 August 2017 in Lima, Peru, to apply international pressure on Venezuela to democratize and respect human rights. This coalition of the willing was deemed necessary after years of vain efforts to work within the gridlocked Organization of American States (OAS) to apply the Inter-American Democratic Charter to the Venezuela case. The Lima Group includes most Latin American countries, and represents a majority of the region’s population, but it does not include the United States.

Maduro’s re-election on 20 May 2018 was neither free nor fair. On the first day of his second mandate (10 January 2019), the government of Canada made this statement: “Today, Nicolás Maduro’s regime loses any remaining appearance of legitimacy. Having seized power through fraudulent and anti-democratic elections [. . .], the Maduro regime is now fully entrenched as a dictatorship. The suffering of Venezuelans will only worsen should he continue to illegitimately cling to power.” ³ In a rebuke to Maduro’s “usurpation,” on 23 January, the president of the democratically elected National Assembly, Juan Guaidó, was chosen by his peers to become the interim president of Venezuela. (He was not “self-appointed,” as if this were even possible, as some commentators said.) This nomination was immediately endorsed by Canada, the Lima Group, and dozens of other countries, mostly in the Americas and in Europe. In the early months of 2019, Venezuela seemed to be at a crossroads, and multilateral pressures could have conceivably restored democracy in the country and countered a menacing trend in the hemisphere.

The language used in Canada’s statements to blame Maduro and his regime could hardly be more categorical. When Maduro was not invited to the Summit of the Americas in February of 2018 by the host country (Peru), Trudeau’s second foreign minister (10 January 2017 to 20 November 2019), and the member of parliament for University-Rosedale, Chrystia Freeland, approvingly added that it “would have been farcical” to have him present. ⁴ Maduro’s regime is “despicable,” she also said. And the Canadian government offered more than “harsh words and condemnations.” The first rounds of sanctions against Venezuelan officials were imposed in the fall of 2017, some of them using a new legal weapon—the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, adopted in October and better known as Magnitsky Act—and targeting Maduro himself, his vice president Tareck El Aissami, a number of cabinet ministers, and the two surviving brothers of former president Hugo Chávez. Canada has now imposed targeted sanctions against 112 Maduro regime officials—not quite as many as the US, but significantly more than the EU. ⁵ Canada has sanctions and related measures in place against only nineteen other countries in the world, Venezuela being the only one in the Americas.

Other actions have included maintaining the existing ban on Canada’s support for Venezuelan candidacies to multilateral and international organizations; imposing a ban on formal bilateral military cooperation; instructing Government of Canada officials not to attend international or multilateral meetings and events hosted by, or in, Venezuela; and restricting the issuance of invitations to senior Venezuelan government and military officials to attend events hosted by, or in, Canada, except where directly relevant to Canadian policy priorities. ⁶ Diplomatic relations with Venezuela were downgraded after the 2018 “illegitimate and anti-democratic” presidential elections, as a result of which the Embassy of Canada to Venezuela was to be headed by a chargé d’affaires rather than an ambassador (although the Canadian chargé d’affaires had been expelled in December of 2017). In 2019, Canada stopped recognizing the diplomats appointed by Maduro to Canada, and all operations by the Canadian embassy in Caracas were temporarily suspended at the end of June. ⁷ In collaboration with five other countries in the Americas, Canada referred the Maduro regime’s illegitimate hold on power to the International Criminal Court (ICC). On 4 February 2019, the Government of Canada announced close to $55 million in humanitarian aid and development support, and another $27 million was announced in May 2020. ⁸ This placed Canada among the top donors in the world responding to the humanitarian crisis. The Venezuela Desk at Global Affairs Canada (GAC) was enhanced into a “Venezuela Task Force” in September 2017. Since September 2020, the task force grew in size with the addition of the development co-operation programme, as Canada hosted the international donors conference in June 2021 to seek funding for the Venezuelan migration issue. ⁹

Explaining Canada’s bold response

In the words of Thomas Axworthy, democracy promotion in Canada usually involves “low-level brick-by-brick building of institutions, listening, mutual learning and a great many workshops and professional development exercise.” ¹⁰ Rarely does it involve the imposition of economic sanctions or reference to the ICC, let alone the recognition of an opposition leader as the only legitimate president in the country, as is the case for Venezuela. Is this evidence of inconsistency, or is there a logical explanation for the selective application of Canada’s idealist foreign policy? The South American nation is hardly the only country in the world with a poor HRD record. It is not even the most dictatorial country in the Americas (Cuba is). ¹¹

What is suggested in this article is that there is in fact some consistency in Canadian policy, if one identifies the appropriate explanatory variables. Using this case study as a plausibility probe for a hypothesis on when and how Canada actively promotes HRD, the case is made that it is more likely to depart from a “brick-by-brick,” capacity building HRD approach, and gear up to a more assertive (even adversarial) one, in the presence of a structure of opportunity at both ends of the bilateral relations. Looking at the case of Venezuela, this article argues the following:

1. There needs to be an opportunity for democratization in the country, prompted by 1.1 a major, multidimensional and sudden crisis, as well as 1.2 the presence of a credible democratic opposition ready to champion democratization. Indicators of crisis include (but are not limited to) economic collapse, humanitarian crisis, massive exodus of the population, increased repression, and authoritarian consolidation. What makes an opposition credible as a democratic force is a combination of organizational coherence, domestic support, international recognition, and a public commitment to democratic values, preferably rooted in an existing democratic tradition.

2. For policymakers in Ottawa, there needs to be an opportunity to prioritize HRD, meaning that this path 2.1 does not appreciably threaten Canadian economic or security interests (trade, investment, and alliances), 2.2 presents an opportunity for broad-based multilateral action (always a plus for a middle power like Canada), and 2.3 does not meet significant opposition in parliament or in public opinion. Arguably, 2.2 is especially relevant for a middle power such as Canada (it is a preferred but not indispensable option for the US). Both 2.1 and 2.3 give policymakers some latitude to formulate initiatives not urgently dictated by hard interests.

One should remember that opportunities are not enough: one needs to seize them. It is more likely, though by no means certain, when key conditions are met.

This article looks at this unique case, but it is meant to be a useful starting point for making sense of the seemingly inconsistent and selective responses by Ottawa to HRD deficits in the world, as well as “within case” variations over time in either set of opportunities.

Opportunities for democratization

While announcing that Canada would host an urgent meeting of the Lima Group in Ottawa on 4 February 2019, Minister Freeland pressed that the “[Venezuela] crisis poses huge security, humanitarian, and economic challenges for the entire hemisphere.” ¹² The full impact of the crisis came under Maduro, and right around the time when the Trudeau administration came to power in 2015. In a 23 February 2019 statement on Venezuela, Freeland said, “For the past two years, the world has watched with great concern as Venezuela, under Nicolás Maduro’s rule, has descended into dictatorship.” ¹³ Arguably, bigger blows to democracy in Venezuela took place in 2015, as the first Lima Group declaration (8 August 2017) recognized, but 2017 was the year when Canada truly increased its pressure.

Crisis

The crisis in Venezuela has two sources (political and economic), and one tragic consequence: a deep and ongoing humanitarian crisis—foreign minister François-Philippe Champagne once called it a “human tragedy”—with destabilizing effects in the region.

The political crisis unfolded from “one of the most acute cases of democratic backsliding in the twenty-first century,” ¹⁴ starting with Chávez’s failed coup in 1992, followed by the decay of the democratic regime until the free and fair election of Chávez as president in 1998. Chávez himself was the target of a failed coup in 2002. His regime can be characterized as populist and “hybrid,” mixing elements of popular sovereignty (and popular support) with growing illiberal tendencies, especially in the years following the failed coup of 2002. ¹⁵ The transition to a full-fledged authoritarian and repressive regime was only completed under his successor.

Under Maduro, the country experienced the longest and largest popular protests in Latin American history. According to one reputable source, up to 17,739 protests took place in 2019 alone. ¹⁶ Those years were marked by the militarization of the state and, according to multiple credible sources, by extraordinary levels of repression, even by Latin American standards. ¹⁷ In September of 2020, a 411-page report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission, set up by the Human Rights Council, found “reasonable grounds to believe that Venezuelan authorities and security forces have since 2014 planned and executed serious human rights violations, some of which—including arbitrary killings and the systematic use of torture—amount to crimes against humanity.” ¹⁸

Venezuela is the only country in Latin America that has seen its human rights record get much worse since 1999. According to Freedom House, it is the tenth largest score decline in the world (−17) over a period of ten years, and the biggest decline in the world in free access to internet. ¹⁹ The NGO Freedom House considered the country as “partly free” (scores 3.0 to 5.0) until 2016, though it had been closer to “not free” than “free” since 2010. The Venezuelan government withdrew from the American Convention on Human Rights in September of 2013, leaving citizens and residents unable to request intervention by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights when local remedies for abuses were ineffective or unavailable. The country has lived in a state of emergency since 2016.

The magnitude of Venezuela’s economic collapse is exceptional in a time of peace. Once South America’s wealthiest country, it is now its poorest. According to a June 2020 article in The Economist, “[b]y the end of this year, in real terms the economy is expected to be a fifth the size it was in 2013, when Mr. Maduro became president.” ²⁰ Venezuela’s GDP is now smaller than Costa Rica’s and the Dominican Republic’s. After peaking in 2018 at 1.8 million percent, the inflation rate is now in the thousands, in a continent where hyperinflation disappeared in the 1980s. This is leading to the gradual abandonment of the bolívar, dollarization, greater informality, and growing illicit and informal economy.

The drivers for eight consecutive years of contraction were many years of mismanagement of the economy under Chávez, mitigated by $980 billion in oil revenue during his presidency. Under Maduro, the economy’s collapse was compounded by a major drop in the price of oil. US sanctions continued to make things worse, especially the additional ones adopted under the Trump administration. ²¹

The 2016 Global Peace Index ranks Venezuela as the world’s fourth most violent country, after Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The report estimates the economic impact of violence at over 40 percent of GDP; the economic impact of homicide alone—36 percent of GDP—is the highest in the world.” ²² Increased violence and recession are also related because of the expansion of shady and outright criminal activities in the country, such as drug trafficking, contraband, extortion, overpricing imports, and illegal mining (“blood gold”) with devastating social and environmental (“ecoside”) consequences. ²³ While this kleptocratic ecosystem is gaining importance relative to the regular economy, it is especially beneficial to the top leaders, which could represent challenges for authoritarian control in the future. ²⁴

Approximately 5.6 million Venezuelans have left the country since 2014, roughly 18 percent of the population. This is the largest exodus in the region’s recent history, in a country which hosted thousands of immigrants and refugees during the twentieth century. ²⁵

According to the US think tank Fund for Peace, which produces the Fragile States Index (formerly the Failed States Index), in 2019 Venezuela was ranked as the twenty-eighth most fragile state in the world. It is in the category “Alert,” two steps down from “Very High Alert” and “High Alert,” second only to Haiti (thirteenth) in the hemisphere, and quite far ahead of a host of Latin American countries under the category “Elevated Warning,” such as Guatemala (fifty-seventh). Venezuela is number one in the category “Most-Worsened Countries in 2019.” ²⁶

As Thomas Legler wrote, “Thanks to its cross-border attributes like migration, public health, and transnational organized crime, we have [also] witnessed the regionalization of the Venezuelan crisis.” ²⁷ That such a regionalization could happen in a time of peace, in a middle-income region with old nations and old states, is quite extraordinary.

Democratic opposition

Unlike many countries analyzed in books with titles like “Exporting Democracy,” Venezuela has both a democratic opposition and a democratic tradition.

While President Maduro terminated democracy, he has not eliminated a fractious and ebbing but still substantial democratic opposition with considerable support abroad. Maduro seems more interested in having a powerless opposition—like the so-called “scorpions,” opposition lawmakers bribed to turn their backs on Guaidó—than in having none at all. For all his (and Chávez’s) well-documented devotion to Cuba, he is leaning toward the Putin model, an option more in line with the twenty-first-century trend of “competitive” and hybrid authoritarian regimes.

Up to fifty-seven countries recognized Guaidó as the legitimate interim president of Venezuela, though “the reality of how this recognition is put into practice varies widely,” as Kristen Martínez-Gugerli stated in a recent update of the situation. ²⁸ Up to thirty out of the fifty-seven countries, including Canada and most European countries, have recognized Guaidó but in practice have open diplomatic relations with both the Guaidó and Maduro governments. ²⁹

The nomination of Juan Guaidó as interim president in January of 2019 emboldened Canada and countries from around the world to step up their pressure on Maduro. While there can be reasonable doubts about the constitutionality of his nomination by the National Assembly (based on articles 233, 333, and 350 of Chávez’s Bolivarian Constitution), the fact is that the legislature became the only remaining democratically elected institution in the country after the “usurpation” of 9 January 2019. The conditions were in place for the international community to offer support to a domestic effort, as opposed to a foreign intervention. “For the first time in many years,” as Minister Freeland put it in her address to open the tenth Lima Group meeting on 4 February 2019, “Venezuela’s National Assembly and now interim president Guaidó have charted a constitutional path forward to establish an interim government.” ³⁰

Venezuela was one of the first Latin American countries to democratize in the twentieth century, and the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, adopted by referendum in 1999, is mostly democratic. Again, to quote Minister Freeland, Canada acted in solidarity with “the people of Venezuela and their desire to restore democracy and human rights in Venezuela.” ³¹

A quick comparison with Cuba is helpful, since it is often considered the model for Venezuelan regime. Fidel Castro’s real or potential opposition was thoroughly extirpated from the body politic roughly two years after the overthrow of dictator Fulgencio Batista. For six decades, Cuba had dissidents rather than an opposition (though this may change in the wake of the unprecedented and nationwide protests of 11–12 July 2021). The European Parliament awards the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought annually, and it did to Cuban dissidents Oswaldo Paya in 2002, the Ladies in White in 2005, and Guillermo Fariñas in 2010. In contrast, in 2017, the Sakharov Prize was awarded to Venezuela’s “Democratic Opposition.”

To acknowledge the presence of a democratic opposition is not equivalent to claiming that all members of the opposition are democrats, or that their avowed beliefs today guarantee democratic behavior tomorrow. In other words, this is not a panglossian judgement on the opposition to Maduro.

Opportunities to prioritize human rights and democratic values

“Canada has rarely, if ever, proven willing to sacrifice material advantage for international human rights,” concludes scholar Andrew Lui, in a fairly non-controversial statement. ³² And yet, listening to government officials and reading GAC statements, one is asked to believe that a free, environmentally sound, democratic Latin America, where everybody’s rights are respected (especially those of Indigenous peoples, women, LGBTQ, and human rights defenders), would be a Latin America that is safer for Canadian investment and trade. No contradiction. In an address at the business-friendly Canadian Council for the Americas Annual Awards Gala in May of 2019, Minister Freeland, who tends to be voluble on that question, said that “it is not only because of our values, but also because of our national interest, that Canada today is fighting really, really hard for liberal democracy and the rules-based international order.” ³³ She also said, “Canada—with 36 million people—could never thrive in a Hobbesian great power world where might makes right.” ³⁴ In a statement celebrating the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ seventieth anniversary, she made a promise: “We will always speak out against violations and strive for a world where the rights and freedoms of all people are respected—even when that causes us adversity.” ³⁵

Economic and security interests

Canada may “always speak out against violations,” but whether it decides to dial up or down its “strong voice” has much to do with the extent to which that could “cause us adversity,” to use Minister Freeland’s expression. Thus, economic factors can conceivably explain Canada’s hesitancy to push hard for HRD in countries like Saudi Arabia (the biggest importer of Canadian weapons), or China (Canada’s second largest trade partner, though far behind the US).

These factors are secondary at best in the case of Venezuela. The oil-producing country was Canada’s second trading partner in the region during the 1960s, behind the much larger Mexico and slightly ahead of Cuba. ³⁶ Nowadays, official statistics indicate that at the onset of the recent crisis, Venezuela was Canada’s eighty-second largest merchandise trade partner (2017), and the fifty-third largest services trade partner in the world (2016). ³⁷ In terms of volume, the modest trade with Venezuela was not notably affected by the Bolivarian “revolution” under Chávez, but it was under Maduro. Canadian exports dropped significantly in 2016, from $630 million in 2015 (roughly the average over the previous twenty years) to $250 million in 2016, and down to $73 million in 2020. ³⁸ Imports from Venezuela dropped earlier but more precipitously around the same time. Finally, over the past quarter of a century, Canadian investments fluctuated, with a figure of $391 million in 1997 and $456 million in 2015 (with a peak of $959 million in 2010), before dropping to negative figures in 2016 and 2017. ³⁹

Though Canada has more free trade agreements in Latin America than in any other region, its economic interests reside more in investment, primarily in the resources and financial sectors, than in trade, per se. In Venezuela, this translates to two files: oil and mines. The former Crown corporation Petro-Canada, a retail and wholesale marketing brand subsidiary of Suncor Energy since 1991, left Venezuela after selling its stake to state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA in June of 2007. It appears that Canadian oil producers have capitalized on Venezuela’s economic crisis by increasing their share of the world’s largest refining market. According to an article published in the Financial Post, “Venezuelan heavy oil production competes directly with Canadian oil sands barrels for space at refineries specially calibrated to process heavy blends.” For the first time, in 2018, Canadian exports to the US Gulf Coast outstripped Venezuelan exports. “That’s a fairly considerable shift in the balance,” according to Scotiabank commodity economist Rory Johnston. ⁴⁰ Rusoro Mining Ltd., a gold producer and explorer with headquarters in Vancouver, still operates in the prolific Bolivar State mining region in southern Venezuela, though part of its assets were expropriated in 2011. ⁴¹ The Venezuelan government’s sponsored media agency Telesur once ran a story that Canada “could have plans to win control of Venezuela’s large gold reserves, as gold mining in Latin America is currently dominated by Canadian firms such as Glencore.” ⁴² In sum, there is certainly a trail of Canadian capitalist interest in the South American nation, but there is no evidence of a capitalist plot driving foreign policy toward this country.

Another possible area where righteous foreign policy could clash with cruel reality is immigration. The Liberal government only eased immigration and refugee rules for Venezuelans in August of 2019, and in a limited way: the relaxed rules only apply to failed asylum claimants who are given a chance to challenge deportation orders “by arguing that they will face risk if they are sent home,” and whose claims “were rejected prior to Aug. 19, as the government says changes to conditions in that country will be taken into account on all future refugee claims.” ⁴³ To date, there has been no indication that Ottawa is prepared to extend something like temporary protection status (offered by US President Biden), or residency rights (as Colombia just extended), to Venezuelan migrants. It is not a simple question, however, and the handling of both HRD and immigration challenges offers ample illustration to H.L. Mencken’s bon mot: “There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.” ⁴⁴

With the relative dearth of hard interest at stake, the personal preferences of a prime minister, or dominant personality of a minister of foreign affairs, may acquire more prominence in shaping foreign policy. Think of Trudeau père and fils and their affection for the Castro family, or Harper’s loyalty to Israel or perhaps to Colombian president Alvaro Uribe. In the same vein, interviews with various officials at GAC confirmed the impression that Minister Freeland wore HRD on her sleeve and truly led the charge on Venezuela, with the same moral clarity, if not the personal dimension, that was manifest in her attention to Ukraine and Russia. During her tenure as foreign affairs minister, she arguably paid more attention to Venezuela than to the entire African continent. ⁴⁵ Canada’s last ambassador to Venezuela from 2014 to 2017, and current president of the Canadian International Council, Ben Rowswell, told journalists that Ms. Freeland understood the gravity of the Venezuela crisis “earlier than most of her counterparts on the world stage.” She “saw Venezuela—like Ukraine—as a ‘front line in the emerging global competition between democracy and authoritarianism,’ with Russia, China, Iran and Cuba backing the Maduro regime.” ⁴⁶ Within the Liberal family, she was praised by human rights activist Irwin Cotler, but indirectly reprimanded by John Manley, who served as president of the Business Council of Canada from 2010 to 2018. Manley said that historically Canada has been able to balance its economic interests with its values. “[L]ately,” he said, “we seem to be mainly focused on the emphasis on values and not so much on where our commercial interests may lie.” ⁴⁷

The previous foreign minister from October 2015 to January 2017, Stéphane Dion, was also “concerned” about the rapidly deteriorating situation in Venezuela. The situation worsened after his departure, which might explain the harsher tone adopted by Freeland. But in late 2016, under Dion, Canada was still calling “on all sides to react with restraint and to look for a lawful resolution to the serious crisis facing the country.” ⁴⁸ Be that as it may, the minister of foreign affairs is chosen by, and works for, the prime minister. She was in effect an engineer, not an architect, of foreign policy.

Broad-based multilateral action

The Venezuela crisis gave Canada an opportunity to be a “leader” while “working with partners to champion human rights around the world.” ⁴⁹ Its foreign policy toward Venezuela certainly seems less extraordinary when one considers that dozens of allies, including the likes of Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Korea, also recognized Guaidó as interim president. Freeland said that “the struggle in Venezuela is not a fight between left and right,” and that it is “about those who stand for democracy and human rights rising up against dictatorship and repression.” ⁵⁰ Thomas Axworthy also said that “it is Russia, China, Cuba, Iran, and Turkey that are the backers of Maduro. The democratic-authoritarian divide has never been clearer.” ⁵¹

This line of thought irons out some incongruities. The Lima Group is still mostly a coalition of centrist or right-leaning governments, but it is as democratic as such a large coalition can realistically be. Founding members like Argentina and Mexico shunned the Group after the election of leftist presidents in 2019 and 2018, respectively. The Group gained the support of Bolivia after the right-wing coup of 2019, but lost it after the electoral victory of the left in 2020. Founding members like Guatemala and Honduras have dubious democratic credentials, due to how dysfunctional their democratic institutions are. Critiques of the Group, mostly on the left, never fail to mention those two to discredit the entire coalition. Switching off democratic sensibilities, they often call on Ottawa to use its Cuba connections to put Havana in the driver’s seat of negotiations between Maduro and the opposition. Cuba is a special and interesting case, for it is Venezuela’s strongest ally, as well as Canada’s friend and “ally,” as Trudeau said. On several occasions Freeland and Trudeau publicly called for Cuba to be part of the solution in Venezuela, even suggesting that it could “potentially play a very positive role” in the Lima Group. ⁵² Trudeau said this publicly in front of Guaidó during his visit to Ottawa in January of 2020. Guaidó politely listened and smiled, which caused some confusion among his coalition back home. Immediately after leaving Ottawa, on 29 January, his “government” issued a communiqué that made it crystal clear that Cuba was part of the problem, not the solution. ⁵³ Whether Cuba could serve as mediator, as it did during the peace negotiations between a guerrilla group and the Colombian government, is worth a discussion, provided one bears in mind that the sustainability of a pro-Cuba regime in oil-rich Venezuela, one that for years replaced the Soviet Union as the only major underwriter to the Castro regime, is immeasurably more vital to Havana’s interests than a clutch of unserviceable guerrilleros at the end of their road in Colombia.

The Lima Group was necessary to remedy the gridlock within the OAS, a sort of League of Nations that struggles to agree on any course of action beyond a basic agenda of support to member states. Some of its members benefit from Chávez’s largesse through programs such as Petrocaribe and Petrosur. ⁵⁴ Still, the Lima Group enjoys the enthusiastic support of the OAS’s secretary general, Luis Almagro (a former foreign minister in a left-of-centre government in Uruguay), and Canada has been instrumental in the passing of several statements and resolutions at the OAS (though there has been no concrete action) “supporting the people of Venezuela in their efforts to achieve political and economic reforms.”

The Lima Group enjoyed the support of the Trump administration, but it is fallacious to claim, as Venezuela’s foreign minister Jorge Arreaza once did, that the Lima Group “[took] its orders from US President Donald Trump.” ⁵⁵ Unlike Trump, the Lima Group has consistently rejected military intervention as an option, preferring what could be called “intervention without intervening.” ⁵⁶ The Venezuelan opposition, including the sectors represented by Guaidó, is not as clear on this issue, with its calls to look closely at pathways offered by the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR) and the Responsibility to Protect narrative. ⁵⁷ In any case, Trump never quite decided whether he wanted to meet with Maduro, whom he unsurprisingly liked more than Guaidó, or overthrow him militarily. ⁵⁸ Other differences emerged over the last year between the Lima Group and the Trump administration, but with the ICC the pattern has been one of increasing convergence. ⁵⁹

While the US is not part of the Lima Group, Canada and the United States formed an association on 5 September 2017 to coordinate sanctions against the Maduro regime. Canada appears to be independently reaching conclusions politically similar to the US’s, with some differences in tactic: not an uncomfortable place to be for a Canadian government.

In sum, the Venezuela crisis presented an opportunity for Canada and most countries of the region to act multilaterally and as equals, independently (in fact ahead) of the US, while being broadly in agreement with Washington on the main objectives. Canadian foreign policy toward Venezuela can also be seen as an experiment in ad hoc multilateralism, in a region where Canada has often expressed the desire to be more relevant, without knowing exactly how. ⁶⁰ That kind of opportunity does not present itself often.

Parliamentary opposition and public opinion in Canada

Trudeau’s pugnacious policy toward the Maduro regime followed the path of the previous Conservative government, who had adversarial relations with the governments of both Chávez and Maduro. Canada’s Andean Unit for Democratic Governance was created in October 2009, to back pro-democracy NGOs in the region and especially in Venezuela. An activist Canadian embassy in Caracas awarded human rights prizes (co-sponsored by the Central University of Venezuela) to activists often critical of the Maduro regime. The embassy also designed and financed the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives (CFLI) in the country, which had a pro-democracy bent, something absent from CFLI projects in Cuba for instance. Prime Minister Harper and a few of his cabinet members at times signalled antipathy toward the Chávez regime. Following Chávez’s death on 5 March 2013, Harper offered condolences but also added, “At this key juncture, I hope the people of Venezuela can now build for themselves a better, brighter future based on the principles of freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human rights.” Harper’s message of condolences was perceived in Caracas, and understandably so, as an invitation to seize the moment to liberalize and democratize the country. ⁶¹

In addition to the executive branch, two standing committees of the Canadian parliament (the Sub-Committee on Human Rights and International Development and the Senate Committee on Human Rights) worked on the Venezuela crisis during the Harper years, inviting numerous witnesses from the Venezuelan opposition (including the wife of then-imprisoned opposition leader Leopoldo López, Lilian Tintori).

The case of Venezuela illustrates Brian Bow and David Black’s contention that “[d]ifferences in the way that the two major parties handle foreign policy challenges may be much smaller than they appear and, even where there has been a significant shift that coincides with a change from one party to another, the shift may be better explained by changing circumstances, either ‘out there’ in the world or within Canadian society.” ⁶² Even the NDP seemed willing to back Trudeau’s recognition of Guaidó when Hélène Laverdière was the party’s foreign policy critic, but she did not seek re-election in 2019. She was strongly criticized for this position by the party’s base, and seemed to have been hung out to dry by the new leader Jagmeet Singh.

If the Trudeau government ramped up the pressure on Maduro, it is conceivably because of the deepening of the Venezuela crisis during his term, not because it reached a different conclusion than his predecessor about the evolving nature of the regime in place. The Conservatives have not opposed Trudeau’s hawkish (neoconservative?) policy on Venezuela, and there is no reason to think that Canada’s position would have been substantially different had Harper’s Conservatives won the 2015 election.

Electorally, there is not much to be gained or lost for the Liberals. Unlike Mexico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic, Venezuela is not a popular destination for Canadian tourists. According to the dated 2016 census, there are 674,640 Canadians of Latin American origins in the country. Only 26,345 of them came from Venezuela. For a comparison, more than one million Canadians claim Ukrainian roots, a fact that helps explains bipartisan support for a bold pro-Ukraine foreign policy. Still, there are some Venezuelan-Canadian voices supporting the opposition (for instance the Canada Venezuela Democracy Forum), and former Liberal MP and justice minister Irwin Cotler served as counsel to opposition leader (and political prisoner at the time) Leopoldo López. He was part of the panel that recommended that the situation in Venezuela be referred to the ICC in May 2018. Coming from the other side, there have been some voices in the media and the NDP opposing Trudeau and Freeland’s policy as well. But there was no major controversy in the public opinion over this policy.

Conclusion

This article presents a model that could yield interesting results looking at variations in HRD policy toward nondemocratic countries with either weak indicators of crisis (Russia), weak or no democratic opposition (e.g., Syria and Yemen), or both (e.g., China and Saudi Arabia). In most nondemocratic countries, there is in fact no real opportunity for democratization, and therefore no reasonable opportunity to prioritize HRD in foreign policy.

Nowadays, Venezuela features the strongest evidence of the two sets of opportunities identified in the introduction. In recent history, South Africa in the final period of apartheid (early 1990s), as well as Tunisia and Egypt during the Arab Spring (2012) fit the bill. Egypt is particularly interesting because the apparently deep pool of Western sympathy for dictator Hosni Mubarak quickly evaporated with the eruption of a political crisis and the surge of an opposition with some democratic credentials. The rapid downfall of Mubarak, who was abandoned by his army, forced Western governments’ hands. The literature on transition from authoritarian rule to democracy is pretty clear on the importance of internal divisions within the ruling elite. Such divisions never materialized in Venezuela around 2017–2018, when the Maduro regime appeared to be weaker and more fractious than it turned out to be.

To further give the model a preliminary test, one could take a quick look at Canadian HRD policy toward Cuba and Nicaragua, for two reasons. First, according to relevant indexes (e.g., The Economist Democracy Index, BTI, Freedom House, and V-Dem), they represent the other two full-fledged dictatorships in the continent. Second, the three cases exemplify an interesting range of Canadian HRD policies, along the line identified in the model, that shows how ideology is not that important in determining Ottawa’s response.

Cuba is the oldest dictatorship in the Americas. It is demonstrably more authoritarian than Venezuela by design, but Canada never pushed very hard for HRD there. The country has been stable for decades (until July 2021 at least), with no opportunity for democratization on the island, and no appetite in the international community, least of all in the Americas, to submit it to a push for regime change. There are some Canadian investments in the island. The US has learned long ago to accept and indeed benefit from Canada’s friendly relations with Cuba. There is also a symbolic factor at play. In a speech at the University of Havana on 16 November 2016, Prime Minister Trudeau not only stated that Canada has “always been a steadfast and unflinching friend to Cuba,” but also declared that Canadian policy toward Cuba is “one of the ways we reassure ourselves that we are our own country.” ⁶³ Quite a lament for a nation. Cuba is such a fixture of our diplomatic landscape that in June of 2019, Foreign Minister Freeland said, referring to Venezuela, that “[w]ith one voice, we must make it abundantly clear to the international community that the existence of a dictatorship in the Americas will not be tolerated.” ⁶⁴ How effortless it was to forget that Cubans have been ruled by dictators since Fulgencio Batista’s coup in 1952.

The example of Nicaragua falls a few notches below Venezuela in terms of Canada cranking up pressure. In 2018, during what was dubbed in Nicaragua as “la crisis” (the crisis), up to 450 demonstrators were killed by security forces. Canada responded by suspending direct aid and imposing sanctions on nine key members of the Ortega government, using the Special Economic Measures Act also invoked to sanction Venezuelan officials. ⁶⁵ The Ortega regime was no less authoritarian before “the crisis,” so that sudden change of events made the difference. Apart from sanctions, Ottawa went no further than calling for “dialogue” between the government and the opposition, and diplomatic relations were maintained. The OAS (and Canada within this institution) continues to condemn Ortega’s authoritarian policies and actions, most recently its anti-democratic “Law for the Defense of the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty and Self-Determination for Peace.” But there is no momentum in the hemisphere or beyond to expand the purview of the Lima Group to include Nicaragua. There is no interim president or opposition leader to be “recognized” either. ⁶⁶

In sum, the case of Venezuela is exceptional. One should not expect the Canadian government to launch democratic crusades on all continents, especially if this experiment fails to bear the fruits it hoped for. What the case of Venezuela certainly shows is that time is of the essence. “Opportunities,” like “crises,” do not last forever. ⁶⁷ On 8 January 2021, in the wake of the fraudulent legislative elections of the previous month, the European Union announced that it “can no longer legally recognize Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the country’s legitimate head of state after he lost his position as head of parliament.” ⁶⁸ It still does not recognize Maduro as the legitimate president, but for how long?

With or without opportunities, defending freedom and human dignity remains the duty of every self-respecting country. When and how to do that, within reason, is always a tough call.