First it was Venezuela. In 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government announced it was joining the U.S. and several South American countries to deny the legitimacy of Venezuela’s upcoming presidential election.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said the Venezuelan voting process was so badly flawed that Canada could not accept its anticipated result, the re-election of socialist President Nicolas Maduro.

By 2019, Canada, the U.S. and others were openly pushing for a military coup in Venezuela to replace Maduro with Washington-approved opposition leader Juan Guaido.

Maduro is still in power. But now Canada is turning its attention to another left-wing South American regime. This time the target is Bolivian President Evo Morales, who was re-elected last month to a fourth term in office.

Bolivia’s opposition did not accept that result and has been engaging in increasingly violent protests ever since. Last week, an opposition mob seized the leftist mayor of one town, chopped off her hair and sprayed her with red paint.

Presumably, this was meant as a warning to those might dare to back Morales.

Following the disputed Oct. 20 election, the U.S. and its conservative allies in South America, plus the European Union, moved quickly to support the opposition demand for a run-off vote between Morales and his main challenger, Carlos Mesa.

There is little love in Donald Trump’s Washington for Morales. Bolivia’s first Indigenous president, he defied America’s war on drugs by legalizing coca production. He also used Bolivia’s natural gas wealth to improve the living conditions of the country’s poor.

Initially, Canada took a cautious approach to the contested election. Ottawa said it would hold off any decision until it saw the results of an election audit by the Organization of American States.

But that wasn’t enough for Bolivia’s opposition and its main backers. The opposition rejects the OAS audit and says it will be satisfied only by a run-off election.

Eventually, Canada acquiesced. On Oct. 29, Ottawa issued a statement saying that it would recognize Morales as Bolivia’s legitimate president only if he held and won a run-off election.

Under Bolivian law, a run-off between the top two candidates in a presidential election is held only if the results of the first round are close. The country’s official election tribunal says the first-round results weren’t close enough to trigger a run-off. The opposition — as well as the U.S. and Canada — say that’s because the first-round vote was rigged.

Or, as Ottawa put it, “It is not possible to accept the outcome.”

In the Americas, reaction to the Bolivian crisis is dividing along ideological lines. The centre-left governments of Mexico and Argentina recognize Morales as Bolivia’s legitimately elected president. The right-wing governments of the U.S., Brazil and Colombia do not.

As with Venezuela, Canada’s allegedly progressive Liberal government has chosen to align itself with the right.

So far, the Bolivian situation is not as serious as that of Venezuela. The Bolivian opposition has not yet tried to create a parallel government. No one is yet calling for an armed coup.

But the country remains badly split between a wealthier, urban east and a poorer, rural and largely Indigenous west.

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In the long-ago days when Canada did not always act as Washington’s shill in the Americas, Ottawa might have been some help to Bolivia. After all, Canada has its own regional divides and its own questions about the legitimacy of elections.

But in those days (think Cuba) Ottawa was willing to deal with governments of different ideological persuasions without constantly judging them and certainly without encouraging regime change.

Now, it seems, Canada thinks that like the U.S. it has the right to interfere — selectively — in other people’s business. We don’t tell the Saudis how to run their country. But we’re happy to tell the Bolivians how to run theirs.