Canada's foreign

policy, as that country which is closer geographically, economically, and

militarily with the US than any other, has long been circumscribed by the whims

of the world's lone Superpower.

Part of the

'hidden wiring' of the US-Canada relationship is premised on the belief that

there is a role for Canada in places where the US carries a lot of

counter-productive baggage. New records obtained by The Dominion show just how

actively intertwined Canada's foreign policy is with the US-led 'democracy'

promotion project in Venezuela.

Successive

Canadian governments, beginning with Paul Martin's Liberals and increasing

under Harper's Tory minorities, have pushed full steam ahead with efforts to

expand Canada's democracy promotion efforts globally. Canadian leadership in

the regime change and military occupation of Haiti (2004-present) gave rise to

a renewed emphasis on the region as an emerging regional power, which carries

on under Harper.

Democracy

promotion is seldom discussed in the Canadian public sphere, even while it has

been the subject of a multitude of federal level conferences, reports, and

parliamentary hearings over the last five years. Over that same time, Canada

has increasingly been integrating its instruments of democracy promotion with

those of the US.

During his

presidential campaign, Barack Obama quietly pledged to increase funding for the

controversial National Endowment for Democracy (NED), despite scaling back the

rhetoric used to describe continuing US aims to promote global, Western-style

democracy. Obama has already fulfilled this pledge.

His Omnibus

Appropriations Act allocates $115 million for NED's operations, increasing by

$35 million the amount requested by Bush for 2009. All told, the requested 2009

budget for US democracy programs is the highest ever at $1.72 billion. By

contrast, Canada spent upwards of $650 million on democracy promotion in 2008.

The NED was

formed in 1983 as a new tool to advance US foreign policy and business

interests around the world. Nominally independent, NED receives the majority of

its budget from Congress, and each of its grants must be approved by the US

State Department.

"One of the

NED's first major successes...was helping to overthrow the Sandinista

government in Nicaragua," writes journalist Bart Jones in his authoritative

biography of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. According to Jones, a couple of

decades later "the NED was rapidly infiltrating [Venezuelan] society in a way

reminiscent of the Nicaragua experience." Channelling money and resources to

opposition NGOs has been a prime strategy of the NED in Venezuela.

Following a

short-lived coup d'etat against Chavez in April 2002, Venezuelan-American

attorney Eva Golinger and investigative journalist Jeremy Bigwood obtained a

treasure trove of documents through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

These documents, released in conjunction with Golinger's 2004 book, The Chavez

Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela, exposed NED's active role in the

attempted subversion of Venezuela's democracy.

One of several

Canadian NGOs whose activities are complementary to those of the NED is the

Canadian Foundation for the Americas (FOCAL). Established by the Mulroney

government in the 1990's, FOCAL is almost entirely dependent on government

funding and is accountable to Parliament.

A 2004

evaluation of FOCAL conducted by Department of Foreign Affairs and

International Trade Canada (DFAIT) and Canadian International Development

Agency (CIDA) wrote:

Stakeholders

from every sector and from the academic community in particular, indicated that

FOCAL is already perceived as 'the right arm of the government,' echoing the

perspective and beliefs of its funding bodies, rather than a truly independent,

non-governmental organization.

"The US has

been using Canadian and European foundations more frequently in recent years to

filter funding to Venezuelan and other NGOs and political parties that promote

their mutual interests," said Golinger, whose most recent book is The

Imperial Web: Encyclopedia of Interference and Subversion. "It's a way of

covering up US meddling and making the sources of foreign funding for political

objectives more difficult to detect. Canada has been a major ally of the US in

this respect, particularly in the case of Venezuela."

Negative

perceptions of the US indicate the necessity of "shifting responsibility for

the [democracy] campaign to more local actors or other Western allies," wrote

Raymond Gastil, one of the theoreticians behind the US shift to democracy

promotion, in 1988.

Although far

from the first such instance, Canada began to take on such "responsibility"

towards Venezuela in January 2005. DFAIT invited the head of a key opposition

group in Venezuela, Sumate's Maria Corina Machado, to meet Ottawa lawmakers and

officials, as well as to give a briefing on political rights in Venezuela.

Machado openly

supported the 2002 coup against Chavez. In 2004, she was charged with

conspiracy to commit treason for allegedly using NED funds to campaign against

Chavez in a recall referendum organized by the opposition.

According to

records obtained by The Dominion through Access to Information request FOCAL's

chairman John Graham joined Machado in Washington, D.C. for a high level

meeting in 2005. In attendance were former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice

and Roger Noriega. "An exchange of ideas as regards the relationships between

the civil society and the governments for the strengthening of democracy in the

region," was the stated purpose of the meeting.

Shortly after

Graham's meeting with Rice and Machado, the NED approved a $94,516 grant for

FOCAL to carry out democracy promotion work in and around Venezuela.

Using the NED

funds, FOCAL was to commission a series of papers and organize a number of

meetings in Ottawa, Venezuela and Ecuador "to discuss how to better

collaborate in promoting an informed civil society that can strengthen democracy

in the region."

But after

Stephen Harper's Conservatives took power in early 2006, FOCAL abruptly

cancelled the activities that were supposed to take place in Venezuela.

"After

discussing this project with various people...[we] came to the conclusion that

it was not in anybody's interests to organize such an activity while being

financially associated with the NED," reads a heavily-censored memo sent by

DFAIT official Flavie Major in July of 2006.

"[S]ince

the project was originally drafted the internal context in Venezuela has

shifted, as has the domestic context in Canada, which could potentially alter

the priority and focus of Canada's engagement in Venezuela," indicates a

separate document obtained through a US FOIA request.

An example of

the changing political context in Venezuela is the 2006 draft Law on

International Cooperation, which was to have limited the ability of local NGOs

to receive funding from foreign governments. Although the law has yet to be

enacted, Western-backed NGOs and their donors have launched a campaign to "push

back" against what they describe as a "backlash" against democracy promoters in

the region.

By late 2006,

the Conservatives proclaimed that democracy promotion was a "fundamental part"

of Canadian foreign policy objectives, and "an eminently worthy and

intrinsically Canadian endeavour." One indication of the Conservative's

commitment was through the appointment of a former NED board member as a top

advisor to Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay.

In late 2007,

the Canadian government gave the NED $198,168 to produce a major report, titled

"Defending Civil Society: A Report of the World Movement for

Democracy." The report attacks Venezuela for its efforts to limit Western-funded

manipulation of its internal politics:

Venezuela's

would-be caudillo Hugo Chavez has a peculiar notion of democracy. His

‘Bolivarian revolution' appears to be based on Chavista [sic] monopolizing the

country's political institutions, from an absence of parliamentary opposition

to a hand-picked judiciary. In these circumstances...civil society provides the

only countervailing power to the Chavista state and to Chavez's Castroite

aspirations.

DFAIT seems to

have based their own talking points on Venezuela around the NED's line.

"Hugo Chavez has a history of weakening democratic institutions. Minister

Kent is committed to furthering the Government's Americas strategy which is

dedicated to promoting and enhancing democracy, freedom and the rule of law,"

wrote a spokesperson for Canadian Minister of State for Latin America, Peter

Kent, in an e-mail statement to The Dominion.

"Hugo

Chavez has a history of concentrating power in the Executive which has

undermined democratic institutions in Venezuela. Since taking office a decade

ago, we've seen the politicization of the judiciary and harassment by

government officials of the state controlled media and NGOs," wrote Kent's

spokesperson when asked to substantiate her claim about Chavez' anti-democratic

tendencies.

One of the ways

that Canada has tried to avoid drawing attention to its support for the

Venezuelan opposition and collaboration with the NED is by carrying out

activities outside of Venezuela and coordinating them through embassies.

Indeed, such methods have a theoretical basis that Canada helped design.

In conjunction

with the NED-linked Council for a Community of Democracies and the US State

Department, DFAIT contributed $70,000 in financing to the publication of A

Diplomat's Handbook for Democracy Development Support, in April 2008.

Canada has one

of the few foreign services that train its diplomats in democracy promotion.

The US Foreign Service Institute has already ordered at least 400 copies of the

Handbook, which aims to provide diplomats with "encouragement, counsel, and a

greater capacity to support democrats everywhere."

"We have over

many, many years and will continue to work with the United States in this

regard in advancing our common goals, certainly to the benefit of both

countries and to the benefit of the world in general," Canada's Consul-General

in New York, Dan Sullivan, said during a launch event for the Handbook in early

2008.

One example of

the Handbook in action is Canada's funding of the Venezuelan NGO Justice and

Development Consortium (Asociación Civil Consorcio Desarrollo y Justicia). This

group, which also receives funding from the NED, has made a name for itself by

working to unite reactionary opposition movements throughout Latin America.

In November

2007, DFAIT gave the Justice and Development Consortium $94,580 "to

consolidate and expand the democracy network in Latin America and the

Caribbean" at an assembly held in Panama City in the spring of 2008. This

meeting, co-hosted by the Canadian Embassy in Panama and the NED, attracted

prominent members of (often NED funded) opposition movements in Venezuela,

Cuba, Bolivia, and Ecuador. It was convened in response to "the usher[ing]

in [of] a new era of populism and authoritarianism in Latin America."

Flying in the

face of the North American read of Venezuelan democracy is the latest report by

the non-partisan Chilean Latinobarometro, which shows that 79 per cent of

Venezuelans polled are satisfied with their democracy.

"Venezuela

has a poor image in the rest of the world... but the perception of Venezuelans

is positive," states the report. "They say they like their democracy as it is

now or, at least, much more than the citizens of other countries like their

democracies which, by contrast, are not criticized by the outside world for

lack of freedom and harassment of institutions."

Colombia, Peru,

Mexico, and Chile are considered Canada's strongest allies in the region, and

are also countries where people's support for their government tends to be

lower than it is in Venezuela. The subversion of Venezuelan democracy and the

laissez faire attitude towards the regimes of Felipe Caldéron in Mexico, Alan

Garcia in Peru and Álvaro Uribe in Colombia demonstrates that building popular

democracies is not the sought after end result of democracy promotion

activities.

The governments

of Colombia, Peru, Mexico and Chile have already entered into Free-Trade deals

with Canada, and each receives high levels of Canadian outward foreign direct

investment, particularly in the extractive sector.

Canadian trade

with Venezuela is second only to trade with Brazil in South and Central

America. Venezuela is the tenth-largest provider of Canada's considerable

foreign oil needs. In 2008, Canada imported $1.36 billion worth of Venezuelan

crude. The North Atlantic Refinery in Newfoundland, home of Premier Danny "Chavez"

Williams, refines the oil.

Anthony Fenton

is an independent researcher and journalist based in British Columbia, who has

traveled to Venezuela several times. Some material in this article is drawn

from a forthcoming book on Canadian foreign policy. He can be reached at

fentona[at]shaw.ca.

