The CEO of Scotiabank has publicly backed Donald Trump’s violent kidnapping of Venezuela’s president. Like him, many top Canadian capitalists likely support the US’ flagrant violation of international law.
In a Globe and Mail Report on Business article headlined “Rising U.S. influence in Latin America could benefit Scotiabank’s growth plans, CEO says”, Scott Thomson celebrates Maduro’s kidnapping. The CEO of Canada’s self-described “most international bank” is quoted saying, “this is a good thing for the Western Hemisphere, it’s a good thing for the U.S., it’s a good thing for the Bank of Nova Scotia.” Thomson also praises Trump’s reinvigoration of the 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine, which was a statement of Washington’s intent to dominate the hemisphere.
Important segments of corporate Canada have long been at odds with Venezuela’s Bolivarian government. A few days after Hugo Chavez’s 2013 death the Report on Business published a front-page story about Scotiabank’s interests in Venezuela, which were acquired just before Chavez’s rise to power. It noted: “Bank of Nova Scotia is often lauded for its bold expansion into Latin America, having completed major acquisitions in Colombia and Peru. But when it comes to Venezuela, the bank has done little for the past 15 years – primarily because the government of President Hugo Chavez has been hostile to large-scale foreign investment.”
More generally, Canadian oil or mining companies were none too pleased with Chavez’ socialistic and nationalistic policies. In a bid for a greater share of oil revenue, Venezuela forced private oil companies to become minority partners with the state oil company in 2007. This prompted Calgary-based PetroCanada to sell its portion of an oil project and for Canadian officials to privately complain about feeling “burned” by the Venezuelan government.
Most significantly, several Canadian companies clashed with Chavez’s government over its bid to gain greater control over gold extraction. Crystallex, Vanessa Ventures, Gold Reserve Inc. and Rusoro Mining all had prolonged legal battles with the Venezuelan government. In 2016 Rusoro Mining won a $1 billion claim under the Canada-Venezuela investment treaty. That same year Crystallex was awarded $1.2 billion under the same treaty. Both companies continue to pursue payments and have pursued the money from Citgo, the Venezuelan government owned gasoline retailer in the US.
In 2011 the Financial Post reported, “years after pushing foreign investment away from his gold mining sector, Venezuelan President Chavez is moving on to the next stage: outright nationalization.” Highlighting its importance to Canadian capital, the Globe and Mail editorial board criticized the move in a piece titled “Chavez nationalizes all gold mines in Venezuela.”
In a further sign of the Canadian mining sector’s hostility to the Venezuelan government, Barrick Gold founder Peter Munk wrote a 2007 letter to the Financial Times headlined “Stop Chavez’ Demagoguery Before it is Too Late”: “Your editorial ‘Chavez in Control’ was way too benign a characterization of a dangerous dictator — the latest of a type who takes over a nation through the democratic process, and then perverts or abolishes it to perpetuate his own power … aren’t we ignoring the lessons of history and forgetting that the dictators Hitler, Mugabe, Pol Pot and so on became heads of state by a democratic process? … autocratic demagogues in the Chavez mode get away with [it] until their countries become totalitarian regimes like Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, or Slobadan Milosevic’s Serbia … Let us not give President Chavez a chance to do the same step- by-step transformation of Venezuela.”
A year earlier, the leading Canadian capitalist told Barrick’s shareholders he’d prefer to invest in the (Taliban controlled) western part of Pakistan than in Venezuela or Bolivia. “If I had the choice to put my money in one of the Latin American countries run by (Bolivian President) Evo Morales or Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez — I know where I’d put my buck,” said Munk, referring to moves to increase the public stake in resource extraction to the detriment of foreign investors.
Benefiting from the privatization of state-run mining companies and loosened restrictions on foreign investment, Canadian mining investment in Latin America has exploded since the 1990s. No Canadian mining firm operated in Peruor Mexico at the start of the 1990s yet twenty years later there were over 500 Canadian mining firms in those two countries. Canadian mining companies have one hundred billion dollars invested in the Americas. Any government in the region that reverses the neoliberal reforms that enabled this growth is a threat to Canadian mining profits.
That’s one reason why Ottawa has long sought to crush the independent/socialistic developments in Venezuela.
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