Canada still hasn't recognized the likely winner of Venezuela's election — Venezuelans want to know why

Some Venezuelan-Canadians say the Trudeau government has failed to stand up for democracy in its response to the July 28 Venezuelan presidential election — an election tainted by widespread evidence of fraud and a government campaign of arrests, disappearances and torture of poll workers.

Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia ruled out seeking asylum abroad yesterday after a judge loyal to the Nicolas Maduro regime issued a warrant for his arrest on Monday.

Global Affairs Canada condemned the arrest warrant in a media statement. Gonzalez was still in hiding when this article was published.

According to digitized returns, Gonzalez's unified opposition won the great majority of votes in the election. But his victory has been rejected by the Maduro regime, which claims to have received 51 per cent of the vote. It is backed by Venezuela's courts and its National Election Commission, both packed with hand-picked Maduro loyalists.

While Gonzalez and his partner, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, have refused international protection, they have asked for international recognition.

Guaido yes, Gonzalez no

In a sharp contrast to its attitude during Venezuela's last major contested election, Canada has so far failed to throw its support behind Gonzalez by declaring him the real winner of the election.

Canada was the second country in the world, after the United States, to recognize Juan Guaido when he was declared interim president by the country's elected National Assembly in response to the fraudulent presidential election of 2018.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken recognized Gonzalez as the legitimate winner of the election on August 1. Peru did so two days before. Argentina, Ecuador, Uruguay and Panama are among other nations that have said unequivocally that Gonzalez won the election and should take office on January 5, 2025.

"When you have that massive voting supporting one candidate," said Venezuelan-Canadian activist Alessa Polga, "that's proved that our people are not divided. It's very disrespectful of the Government of Canada to ignore those facts.

"If they really support democracies, if they really are — as they said before — on the side of the Venezuelan people, they must recognize Edmundo Gonzalez."

Polga was for years the Canadian coordinator for Vente, Machado's party , and has been active in trying to mobilize support for Edmundo Gonzalez.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has called on the Trudeau government to recognize Gonzalez and Conservative MP Stephanie Kusie has introduced a petition in Parliament demanding that the government do so.

Instead, Canada has joined with other countries in expressing "deep rejection of the repression of protesters and the violence that has cost the lives of many Venezuelans in the post-electoral context."

Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly has said that in Ottawa's view, "the results claimed by Maduro authorities of this election don't reflect the will of the Venezuelan people." She has spoken to Machado.

Shortly after the election, Canada's delegation to the Organization of American States told other member-states Ottawa did not buy Maduro's claims of victory and did not want them recognized.

Global Affairs' statement says Canada views Maduro's claim to victory as fraudulent. But while the federal government says it doesn't believe Maduro won, it hasn't said who did and has yet to extend official recognition.

Instead, Canada has confined itself to calling on the Venezuelan government to produce official returns to back its claims of victory — something the regime clearly is not willing to do.

"The electoral data collected by citizen witnesses and independent international observers provides credible evidence that the results claimed by Maduro authorities of this election don't reflect the will of the Venezuelan people," Global Affairs' Clémence Grevey told CBC News. "We reiterate our call on the Venezuelan authorities to ensure transparency and publish detailed results for all polling stations."

'We don't need tweets'

"We don't need those short bland statements or those weak tweets," said Polga. "Come on, we're talking weeks after the election. We have more than 1,600 political prisoners, and you know who they are — the scrutineers.

"I want every Canadian to understand — imagine that you are a scrutineer in a Canadian election, and after that you are kidnapped and put in jail and condemned for terrorism, just because you are executing your responsibility as a citizen in an electoral process."

Ana Poilievre, the Conservative leader's Venezuelan-born wife, also criticized those tweets as "weak."

"I don't fault the government," said Ben Rowswell, Canada's last ambassador to Venezuela before relations deteriorated. "I think they're taking a cautious approach. But you don't see Canada leading on Venezuela in the way that we did in the 2010s."

"We played the leading role in the Lima Group," he added, referring to the multilateral body established in 2017 in Peru to defend democratic norms and human rights in Venezuela. "We were quite prominent in the effort to try and help Venezuelans through their political crisis. And now I find that we're in a position where we're forced to be much more cautious because we don't have our own eyes and ears on the ground" since the closure of the Canadian embassy in Caracas.

Ironically, it was the recognition of Guaido that led to that situation, said Rowswell.

"When you recognize someone as the president of a country, you also then recognize that person's diplomats to be accredited to your country," he said. "So we recognized as ambassador their representative. That then led to a situation where the Maduro government denied us diplomatic visas and that's what led to the closure of the Canadian embassy."

Polga said Canada should not be asking the Maduro regime to release returns five weeks after the election because 80 per cent of the returns have been published online and Canada already knows what they show.

"I would say the Canadian government is in a grey zone," she said. "It's frustrating for us that they don't define their position."

A mandate from voters

The contrast with Canada's former approach is all the more striking because Edmundo Gonzalez appears to be on stronger constitutional ground than Juan Guaido, given that he has a direct popular mandate.

Guaido was not, as some critics charged, a "self-proclaimed" president of Venezuela. He was appointed by the National Assembly under a clause of Venezuela's constitution that says the Speaker of the assembly should act as interim president if there is a power vacuum.

Both the Government of Canada and the opposition-dominated Venezuelan National Assembly agreed that as of January 10, 2019 — the day of Maduro's re-inauguration — Venezuela no longer had a legitimate president.

The 2018 election marked a turning point for the international legitimacy of the Maduro government. While it had frequently criticized Venezuela over human rights abuses, Canada had accepted up to that point that Venezuela's ruling United Socialist Party was able to win elections, even if electoral processes fell short of international norms.

At one point in time, Maduro's mentor Hugo Chavez enjoyed genuine popularity that made cheating unnecessary. But by 2018, it was impossible for the government to dragoon enough voters to the polls to ensure a legitimate victory. The fraudulent 2018 election was denounced by the United Nations and countries throughout the region.

Canada accepted the argument that the National Assembly, as the last remaining body in Venezuela that could trace its mandate to a more-or-less fair election, had the legitimacy to nominate an interim president. Guaido enjoyed a burst of popular support on the streets of Venezuela — but proved unable to dislodge Maduro from the Miraflores Palace.

As the fractious Venezuelan opposition soon fell into its habitual infighting, the Lima Group withered as a left-wing electoral wave swept the four most populous nations of Latin America, bringing Maduro-friendly (or at least Maduro-tolerant) governments to power in Argentina, Mexico, Brazil and Colombia (Argentina has since flipped back to the right).

A tougher international context

"There isn't as clear a united front coming from the Americas as there was in 2019, when the Lima Group represented virtually all of the democracies in the region," said Rowswell. "We've got a different constellation of actors.

"We are following the lead of certain Latin American countries. The ones that seem to be most influential in Canada's decision-making are Colombia, Brazil and Mexico."

Those three countries are all led by left-wing presidents who have in the past had friendly relations with the Chavez-Maduro governments. However, they have taken a different approach from a bloc of mostly undemocratic socialist governments, such as Cuba's and Nicaragua's, that have accepted Maduro's victory at face value. 

Colombia, Brazil and Mexico have instead asked patiently for Maduro to produce the digitized receipts of the election — most of which have leaked already and clearly show that the opposition took about two-thirds of the popular vote.

The Venezuelan opposition was able to unite around a single candidate, Machado, who received over 90 per cent of votes in an opposition primary. But the government banned her from running, so the opposition nominated a second joint candidate. She was also banned.

That's how an somewhat obscure retired diplomat, Edmundo Gonzalez, ended up on the ticket.

Venezuelans 'did their part'

The terms of the 2024 elections were set last October by the Barbados Agreement between the Maduro government and the opposition. For the Maduro government, the incentive was an end to sanctions and other pressure tactics imposed by the U.S., the European Union and Latin American neighbours.

Polga said ordinary Venezuelan voters and poll workers did their part by showing up to vote and scrutinize results despite a climate of fear.

"One of the things that I'm very disappointed with the Government of Canada is that they are not recognizing that we did what they asked. We did what specifically Canada requested, which was we went to an electoral process," she said.

"Now we are done with the electoral process. We won the electoral process. Why can they not recognize Edmundo Gonzalez? It's disrespectful for the more than 29,000 Venezuelans here in Canada.

"It's not valued, the effort of a whole population to vote and manifest what they want. We just want freedom. We just want democracy, and that's why we vote."

Rowswell said the time has come to stop merely asking for the release of election receipts

"I do think there needs to be an update, and that the UN General Assembly that's about to convene in New York City offers an opportunity," he told CBC News. "This is kind of the Super Bowl of diplomacy. So everyone who's anyone in diplomacy is in New York, including the prime ministers and presidents and foreign ministers of virtually all the countries of the Americas."