VANCOUVER—Divisive tactics employed by Venezuela’s populist leader Nicolas Maduro to maintain his grip on power are being echoed to a “dangerous” degree by U.S. President Donald Trump, says Canada’s former ambassador to Venezuela.

And he worries those tactics could bleed into Canada as well.

Ben Rowswell, who served as ambassador from 2014 to 2017, said Canada’s politics, economy and international relations are at risk of being compromised by the “constitutional crisis” brewing in the U.S., a crisis driven by populist strategies that appear torn from Maduro’s “playbook.”

“We have relied on the assumption for as long as Canada and the United States have been independent countries that we’re both democracies,” Rowswell said in a Wednesday interview in Vancouver.

“The United States is still a democracy now, but the path that it’s on might lead it away from that, and that is going to place Canada in an extremely difficult strategic position. How do we continue to be heavily integrated with a country that might be jettisoning the constitutional basis of democracy?”

Rowswell is currently the president of international-relations think tank Canadian International Council. He stopped in the city to speak at the Vancouver Public Library on Tuesday as part of a tour to “raise the alarm bell about where the United States might be headed and what that means for Canada.”

Over a 25-year career, Rowswell served with the United Nations in Somalia, as Canada’s first diplomatic envoy to Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein, with NATO in Kandahar during Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan and as an adviser on international strategy in the Privy Council Office under Jean Chrétien and Stephen Harper.

Rowswell drew a number of connections between the tactics he witnessed Maduro employ and the strategies put to use by Trump to flout democratic norms.

Both men leverage existing divisions within their countries, positioning themselves as leaders uniquely able to help one group gain victory over another, he said. Maduro has framed himself as a champion for poor, urban Venezuelans, he explained, while Trump has claimed the title of advocate for disenfranchised, working-class American over the interests of a corrupt, entrenched elite.

Maduro has increasingly worked to marginalize the institutions that typically act as bulwarks for democracy, Rowswell continued. These bodies include the Venezuelan courts, the legislature — the “last democratically elected body” from which Maduro’s current counterclaimant to the presidency, Juan Guaido, emerged — the free press and to some extent his own bureaucracy, Rowswell said.

Similarly, Trump regularly attacks the press, attempts to politicize the judiciary by stacking the courts with conservative-leaning justices and sows doubt about the political independence of institutions such as the State Department and policing and intelligence agencies, he said.

Most alarmingly, Rowswell said, is the Trump administration’s recent challenge to the investigative power of U.S. Congress.

In 2015, he recounted, Venezuelan opposition parties won control of the country’s National Assembly. At that time, it was widely expected that Maduro would be forced to negotiate with the legislature, effectively foiling his otherwise unchecked power, he said.

“In fact, (Maduro) essentially went to political war with congress and challenged their fundamental legitimacy and authority, to the point that that legislature has not actually been able to turn any bill into law in the entire period.”

The Trump administration’s repeated refusal to acknowledge the authority of congressional subpoenas represents an unprecedented mirroring of that same tactic in Canada’s closest ally, he said.

Meanwhile, Trump’s unrelenting attacks on American institutions serve to cripple faith in the democratic process, he said — a decline streamlined by voter suppression tactics and Republican gerrymandering.

“I don’t think Americans are going to take this sitting down,” Rowswell asserted, adding his forecast for the U.S. is a slide into “profound” constitutional crisis, not dictatorship.

But that crisis, he added, “is going to be extremely destabilizing for a country like Canada that relies on such close integration with the United States.”

He pointed to a complete loss of predictability in the alliance between Canada and the U.S., as exemplified by Trump’s “outrageous imposition of steel tariffs,” only recently rolled back. Trump’s threat of “ruination” for Canada and characterization of Canada as a risk to U.S. national security likewise point to the upending of bilateral relations, Rowswell said.

Canada’s domestic political landscape may also be at risk, he added, noting political trends in the U.S. often bleed over into Canada.

“Populism is actually a successful method for gaining power, so it’s probably just a question of time before someone in Canada attempts to import those tactics here,” he said, adding that despite some suggestions to the contrary, he hasn’t yet seen a genuinely populist Canadian politician.

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The solution, he said, includes encouraging Canada’s political leadership to condemn divisive rhetoric, especially as the country approaches the October general election; insisting that institutions such as the courts and Parliament are out-of-bounds as political footballs during campaign season; and urging politicians to focus on presenting solutions, rather than exacerbating divisions as a political tool.

But average Canadians have a part to play too, he suggested, including acknowledging a divided country can be a healthy thing, so long as debate is conducted respectfully and Canada’s leadership listens earnestly.

“(Our) divisions belong to us, and it’s what we do as Canadians in the face of those temptations to division that matter,” he said.

“It’s really our responsibility as Canadians to remain united and to remain loyal to one another, even as we disagree with one another.”

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