Will Canada follow the same path as Venezuela

One generation to go from constitutional democracy to authoritarian communism

It only took one generation for Venezuela to move from a prosperous democracy to a communist basket case. There are lessons in its history for Canadians.

Venezuela is host the worldest largest reserves of oil. Canada ranks third

At US$80 per barrel, the value of Venezuela’s reserves (in the ground) is $24 trillion or US$850,700 for every one of Venezula’s 28.4 million people. But the per capital GDP of Venezuela is US$4,000.

The technology to develop oil & gas reserves is well known and readily available. The costs of that development are spent within the host country and add to its economy, not subtract. Development of Venezuela’s oil industry using modern methods would have made it among the richest countries on Earth even without developing other industries, giving it the opportunity to industrialize and diversify its economy. Taxes and royalties from oil & gas development could have funded education, health care, pensions and infrastructure to build a thriving nation among the most successful in the world.

What went wrong?

In 1999 (only 25 years ago) an extremely charismatic leader was elected as President, Hugo Chavez. An extraordinary individual driven by a desire for power, Chavez is aptly described in an article by Zeesham Aleem in Vox in 2017:

Chavex began by capitalizing on the riches provided by the oil boom to build his own power while basking in the adulation of citizens who saw unemployment fall, per capita income rise, and the oil industry nationalized.

The Aleem article went on:

There are many parallels between Chavez and both Pierre Elliot Trudeau in 1968 and Justin Trudeau since 2015. Both charismatic, both articulate, both able to rally citizens to follow them and their leftist ideology.

Chavez died at 58 years of age but had hand-picked Nicolas Maduro as his vice-president and successor. Lacking Chavez’s charisma, Maduro was a “strongman” who repealed the constitution, imprisoned opponents, rigged elections, and embraced communism, and forcefully put down widespread opposition when oil prices collapsed since Venezuela had never diversified its economy under Chavez or Maduro. As the New York Times reported, Venezuela became a socialist catastrophe.

The decline in Venezuela, now one of the poorest countries in Latin America, followed a series of actions by Chavez and Maduro that censored free speech, muzzled the press, emasculated the National Assembly, and made Venezuela a one party system with a tyrant in charge, all in the space of less than twenty years.

Can it happen in United States or Canada?

I think it can, but it is more likely in Canada than in the U.S.

The United States Democratic party has many parallels with the Venezuelan experience -

• using the Department of Justice to attack or imprison political opponents, using the FBI to intimidate social media to suppress information critical of the Democrats in the 2020 election

• dividing society by pretending DEI is “inclusive” when it overtly divides by identity group

• running up massive debts with inflationary fiscal policies that make the electorate more reliant on government

• intervening in key industries (particularly energy) to restrict free markets

• using taxpayer money to subsidize ideologically attractive industries with the “Green New Deal” all based on the pretense that CO2 causes climate change

• permitting uncontrolled immigration to pressure housing, schools, health care and social service costs and infrastructure

• enacting “soft on crime” policies that have seen crime become rampant in “blue” cities

But he United States has the protection of a well-established and effective Constitution that embodies checks and balances that make material changes to the U.S. sytem of government virtually impossible without the support of most of the States, and an electorate that still has the right to own firearms. America is likely to regress into civil war long before an elected leader can pull off a major change in the sytem of government like Maduro did in Venezuela. As attractive as the concept of socialism may be to many Americans who think governments should look after every aspect of their well being, too many Americans value free markets, personal freedom, and individual rights and responsibilities to abidicate control over their lives to tyranny.

The current popularity of candidate Donald Trump is less a statement support for his personality or values (which I think are despicable) and more a statement of support for the reality that he is committed to the American constitution’s principles and strong enough to ensure socialism fails.

Canada is a horse of a different colour. While America has three co-equal branches of government - the Administration, Congress and the Supreme Court - Canada has only one, its Parliament, since the Canadian Senate is impotent and the Canadian Supreme Court is not a co-equal branch of government but merely an advisory, with judges appointed by the Prime Minister (effectively, through the Government in Council) devoid of an adversial vetting process.

In Canada, there are few (if any) limits to the power of the Prime Minister. Cabinet ministers who disagree with him (like Jody Wilson-Raybould, for example) are simply stripped of office. Elected members of the house of commons who vote against a government proposal are ejected from caucus and sit as independent members. It is almost impossible for the House of Commons to replace a Prime Minister. (By contrast, the U.S. system permits impeachment, althought it is a pretty high bar to get over to succeed, and a Constitional provision that the cabinet of the Administration can choose to remove the President.)

In Canada, the only protections we have against a movement towards authoritarian socialism led by an incumbent Prime Minister comprise two elements of our system - the legal requirement for an election every four years and the strength of our election process with an electorate that will come out and vote for change when an incumbent government goes too far right or left. Those are real strengths but may not be enough when we have a Prime Minister willing to invoke the Emergency Act to put down a peaceful protest, having the courts later find that step was illegal, and suffering no consequences.

If he had the balls to do it, and some Canadians have encouraged him to try, Justin Trudeau could again invoke the Emergency Act (which gives him enormous powers) by declaring a “Climate Emergency” and use that excuse to nationalize the oil & gas industry, imprison Canadians who resist, and impose arbitrary restrictions on freedom of assembly, free speech, inter-provincial trade, gun ownership, and so on. While CO2 is harmless and there is no “Climate Emergency” years of leftist propaganda have persuaded many Canadians that there is such an emergency, so the door is open. Zealots like Stephen Guilbeault, Jonathan Wilkinson, Tzeporah Berman, Mark Carney, and Bill Blair could be put in positions of power over the military, law enforcement, finance, treasury, and the Bank of Canada and leftist judges appointed to an expanded Supreme Court. It could all be done in a matter of weeks, not years.

Think it can’t happen here? Wake up to reality.

Major shifts in the political landscape were not confined to Venezuela. The Russian revolution, the rise of National Socialists in Germany, the rise of Fascists in Italy and Spain, and the rise of Mao Tse Tsung in China all happened very quickly once they started, and all followed the emergence of a charismatic leader able to inflame passions about a chosen enemy (the Tsar, the Jews, the Communists, the Chinese emperor) with the willingness to use brute force to get and keep power. In Canada, the purported “enemy” is “climate change” under Trudeau.

Josef Goebbels famously stated that effective propaganda blames your adversary for precisely what you are doing. The leftist criticisms of Donald Trump and Pierre Poilievre do just that. They call Trump a “threat to democracy” when he is likely the best choice to protect democracy in America, and label Poilievre as “far right” when his policies are more akin to those of the 1960 era Liberal platform than anything right of center, while the Liberals and NDP are outright socialists who refuse to come clean about their plans. The emerging Trudeau campaign for 2025 will incessantly demand to know Poilievre’s “climate plan” when no such plan is either necessary or for that matter even possible, since Canadians cannot control global weather.

Given the strength of Poilievre in the polls, I think there is little risk that Trudeau has a chance for re-election. Canada is safe if Trudeau does not go off the rails and caves in to the far left using “climate change” as his excuse to launch a bid for more power. I doubt he has the courage to try, but the elements are all in place and I would be neither shocked nor surprised if he did.

I get asked by friends for investment advice, which I won’t give except to respond “buy canned food, bottled water and ammunition”. I am joking when I say that to my pals, but not by much.