Canada will try to defeat Venezuela in a football friendly Tuesday. For its part, the NDP has worked to undermine the South American country for years away from the soccer pitch.
As I’ve recently written, NDP MPs and leadership candidates have stayed mum about Donald Trump’s escalating war on Venezuela. Despite polls showing that over 90% of Venezuelans and most Americans oppose US strikes, Canada’s social democratic party has failed to speak up about Canada’s contribution to ten weeks of US aggression and bombings.
In a similar vein, the NDP’s foreign critic remained mum when Trump threatened to invade Venezuela in the summer of 2017 and when US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called for a military coup in February 2018. In fact, the NDP has openly supported US imperialism against Venezuela. In January 2019 party foreign affairs critic Hélène Laverdière endorsed far-right politician Juan Guaido’s self-declaration as president.
A former Canadian diplomat, Laverdière aligned herself with Venezuela’s far right, which had repeatedly sought to overthrow democracy. Among numerous criticisms of Venezuela’s government, Laverdière in 2017 labelled the vice-president “a drug lord” from whom “the American government has seized billions of dollars of his assets for drug trafficking.” Laverdière should have been removed as foreign critic the day after repeating this obviously absurd claim from Venezuela’s lunatic far right.
During her time as foreign critic between 2015 and 2019 Laverdière backed efforts by Washington and the opposition to undermine an essentially democratic effort to empower the poor and working class. Between 1998 and 2017 the Bolivarian Revolution won 19 of 21 elections and for most of that period it improved the lives of poor and working-class Venezuelans. But the revolution was weakened by President Hugo Chavez’ death in 2013, a huge drop in the price of oil, a shift to the right in the region as well as a failure to overcome the country’s oil dependence, corruption and crime. Throughout this period, it faced aggressive attacks by the country’s traditional business class, opposition parties and much of the media, not to mention the US Empire.
Amidst opposition protests in August 2017, Laverdière demanded Ottawa do more to undermine Maduro’s government. She told CBC, “we would like to see the [Canadian] government be more active in … calling for the release of political prisoners, the holding of elections and respecting the National Assembly.” Laverdière’s statements ignored the death and destruction caused by the opposition protesters and the division of powers between the different branches of Venezuela’s government. It also ignored the opposition’s effort to hamstring the government after it won control of the National Assembly in 2015.
In June 2016 Laverdière put out a press release bemoaning “the erosion of democracy” and the need for Ottawa to “defend democracy in Venezuela”. In it Laverdière said, “the OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro has invoked the Inter-American Democratic Charter regarding Venezuela, and Canada, as a member of the OAS, should support his efforts.” But the former Uruguayan Foreign Minister’s actions as head of the OAS were highly controversial. They even prompted Almagro’s past boss, former Uruguayan president José Mujica, to condemn his bias against the Venezuelan government, which had been elected. (The president of Brazil, on the other hand, came to power through a questionable impeachment process and had a 5% approval rating, according to polls. But the NDP appears to have stayed mum about Vice President Michel Temer’s “soft coup” in Brazil in mid-2016.)
Even before Laverdière, the NDP took up Washington’s line towards Venezuela. Amidst three months of violent right wing protests in early 2014, then NDP foreign critic Paul Dewar sponsored a House of Commons resolution that asked “the Government of Canada to urge Venezuelan authorities to proactively de-escalate the conflict, protect the human and democratic freedoms of Venezuelan citizens, release all those detained during the protests, immediately cease all government interference with peaceful protesters, and ensure that those people who perpetrated the violence be brought to justice and bear the full weight of the law.”
Is the NDP blinded by relentless media propaganda against Venezuela of the sort that has long been aimed at Cuba or any country that tries to assert its independence from the US Empire? Can’t the party see through the pro-capitalist, Empire, lies such as the Trump administration’s current claims about “white people” in South Africa being a persecuted minority despite owning a disproportionate share of the economy. Does the NDP agree with Canada being a partner in enforcing imperialism? If so, what sort of home does it offer those who oppose the US Empire and all forms of imperialism?
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