by S. da Silva – BASICS Issue #18
For a government that has shut down (“prorogued”) its Parliament twice in just over a year, the Conservatives haven’t a shred of moral authority to be preaching democracy to the world. Yet, this is exactly what Canadian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Peter Kent was did on his recent visit to Venezuela.
Kent indicated that he was concerned with the Chávez government’s decision to temporarily suspend the broadcasting license of a number of TV channels for breaching broadcasting laws. Kent said that “democratic space within Venezuela has been shrinking… Canada is very concerned about the rights of all Venezuelans to participate in the democratic process.” It’s not inconsequential that one of these stations, RCTV, played a critical role in supporting the 2002 coup against Chávez.
Most Canadians will remember Peter Kent from his days on Global News, Canada’s most unabashedly rightwing media outlet. With Canada having one of the most concentrated media establishments of all the big capitalist countries, the kind of media Kent advocates for is the kind where the largest corporate interests have a completely “free” reign over society.
Kent is also a board member of the Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD), a neo-conservative political organization that fronts for Israel and India. That the CCD considers Apartheid Israel and the India to be democracies says a lot about the Canadian government’s views on democracy. India, for instance, is wracked by civil war all throughout its territories and is waging a massive campaign of dispossession and terror against the rural adivasi peoples under the banner of fighting the Maoist People’s War.
In response to Kent’s criticisms, President Chávez said on public television that “The United States and its allies, such as the ultraconservative Canadian government, are attacking Venezuela in an attempt to unleash violence and destabilize the situation in the country.”
The sort of “democracy” Canada supports almost prevailed in 2002 in Venezuela when Chávez was kidnapped by a CIA-backed right-wing opposition group. The Canadian government and Chávez’s opponents would have the world forget that it was the massive action of the tens of thousands of people waging insurrection in the streets of Caracas that forced the return of Chávez.
That sort of democracy, the democracy of the millions self-directing their actions, scares the crap out of the Kents and Harpers of the world. But the Conservative Party isn’t the only political party to keep our eye on.
During the 2002 coup against Chávez, the Chrétien Liberals silently accepted the right-wing dictatorship while the majority of the Western hemispheres leaders were denouncing it. With the failure of the 2002 coup, the Liberal government joined the U.S. in funding right-wing anti-Chávez groups, such as Súmate.
And now the Conservative-led Canadian government is looking to take “democracy promotion” to new levels with the proposed creation of the Canadian Centre for Advancing Democracy. If created, Canadian taxpayers will see as much $65 million of their tax dollars being dumped into this new agency every year so that the Liberal-Conservative vision of “democracy” can be promoted throughout the world.
Is this the sort of democracy the majority of Canadians aspire towards? Or is it the sort that takes to the streets in rebellion, as Venezuela did in 2002 and as Canadians should now be doing, when the ruling class closes down democracy in the name of democracy?
Perhaps many Canadians can’t yet tell the difference between liberal-capitalist democracy and revolutionary mass-based democracy. But I’d venture a guess that as the economic situation deteriorates in Canada, working-class Canadians are going to figure out the difference for themselves.
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