The Ugly Canadian: Harper Policy in Latin America

[Judi Lynn]

The Ugly Canadian: Harper Policy in Latin America
Thursday, 17 January 2013 16:09 By Paul Jay, The Real News Network | Video

Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome back to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore. And we're continuing our series of interviews with Yves Engler.

So Yves, as I said, is a Canadian commentator and author, and his recent book The Ugly Canadian is all about Stephen Harper's foreign policy. Thanks for joining us again, Yves.

YVES ENGLER, AUTHOR AND POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Thanks for having me.

JAY: Let's talk about Latin America. Has Stephen Harper's policies towards Latin America changed in any way from previous Canadian policy?

ENGLER: It's a heightening of the sort of hostility towards the leftward shift in Latin America, a number of criticisms of the Venezuelan government, and going out of its way to criticize the Venezuelan government. And Peter Kent, the minister for Latin America for a couple of years, he went down to Venezuela back in January 2010 and only met with opposition figures and made a number of critical comments about the lack of democracy in Latin America.

They've responded to the coup against Fernando Lugo back in June this year. They were—Canada was the only country to recognize the new government in Paraguay that had overthrown Lugo, who had ended 61 years of one-party rule.

The Canadian government was—tacitly supported the coup in Honduras against Manuel Zelaya in June 2009. Canada was the only country to not—only major donor to Honduras to not cut off some of its aid after the coup. The European Union, the World Bank, even Washington suspended some of its aid. Ottawa refused to suspend its aid to Honduras after the coup, maintained the military training assistance program whereby a handful of Honduran troops are trained by the Canadian military of Canada, so many different public comments in support of the new post-coup government in Honduras. So they've taken a very right-wing position on Latin America, close to, obviously, the Canadian mining companies that are huge players throughout the hemisphere.

More:
http://truth-out.org/video/item/13997-the-ugly-canadian-harper-policy-in-latin-america

[naaman fletcher]

1. It's rather stunning

Canada once had nothing but goodwill around the world. In various contexts I won't get into it was common practice for Americans to pass themselves off in certain places in the world as Canadians in order to avoid being targets.

Now this asshole Harper is in.

What I find perplexing is, why? There have been RW assholes in Canada before who nevertheless felt no need to randomly ruin the image of their countrymen abroad even if their policies at home were wanting.

WTF does Harper possible get out of this? A teaching a position at Harvard when he retires?