Trudeau must make foreign policy course correction for South America

Canadian prime ministers have always exhibited an intense idiosyncratic hostility towards left-leaning governments in South America –with the possible exception of Cuba. This has fluctuated between turning a blind eye as right-wing juntas slaughtered environmentalists and human rights workers, to waging aggressive pressure tactics to undermine left-of-centre political leaders. Part of the answer lies in Canada’s strategic commercial interests. Latin America is home to lucrative mining opportunities for everything from gold, copper, sliver, zinc—and in the era of battery powered cars—lithium. Sixty per cent of all the mining companies in the world are registered in Canada, making us one of biggest players in the game. According to MiningWatch Canada, in 2019, before the pandemic, there were over 40 Canadian mining companies active in Chile alone, with stakes in over 100 mining projects. As Telesur reported in 2018, out of 290 mining companies operating in Mexico, 211 were Canadian. This pattern repeats in Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Guyana, to name a few. Bhagwant Sandhu is a retired director general with the federal government. Photograph courtesy of Bhagwant Sandhu Most of these countries are now tacking the ship of their states leftwards. This means that that human rights abuses and unchecked emissions of mining pollutants will likely come under intense scrutiny. The election of Gustavo Petro as president of Colombia on June 20 illustrates this better than anywhere else. Petro is a socialist, an ex-guerilla fighter. He ran on a platform to promote green energy and to stop fossil fuel explorations. His vice-president, Francia Marquez, is an Afro-Colombian. She has been recognized internationally for her environmental and Indigenous rights activism. Until Petro’s election, left-wing parties were perpetually kept out of power in Colombia, often with heavy meddling by the United States and tacit political interference by Canada. That kind of subterfuge is not viable anymore. One by one, voters from Peru to Honduras, Chile, Mexico, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Argentina are electing social-democratic governments. Brazil is expected to follow suit very soon; when it does, the vast majority of the people in South America will be practicing progressive politics. This puts Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his foreign policy postures in a tight spot. Until Colombian President Gustavo Petro's election, left-wing parties were perpetually kept out of power in Colombia, often with heavy meddling by the United States and tacit political interference by Canada, writes Bhagwant Sandhu. Juan Manuel Herrera/Organization of American States photograph courtesy of Flickr Under Trudeau’s tenure, Canada helped form the Lima Group in 2017 with the aim to overthrow the socialist government of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. In 2019, we cheered for the coup d’état against the first Indigenous and centre-left leader Evo Morales in Bolivia. More recently, we maintained full radio silence at U.S. President Joe Biden’s refusal to invite Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to the June meeting of the Organization of American States in Los Angeles. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, another leftist, refused to attend that same meeting in protest of Biden’s decision. Vilifying duly elected left-of-centre governments might have worked as a short-term ploy to protect Canada’s money-making objectives in the region, but it is not sustainable as a long-term strategy. It smudges our reputation and gives us the look and feel of the Americans. Trudeau needs to make a foreign policy course correction for South America. Perhaps he could start by championing the need to strengthen international governance and regulatory frameworks for the mining industry. Currently, there is no consistency for accountability in the mining sector. Whereas Canadian law lists over 340 pollutants from mining activities as illegal, Mexico lists only 104. This is one of the reasons mining companies in Latin America can get away with what would never be tolerated in Canada. The prime minister could encourage his G7 counterparts to align all the disparate domestic laws into one cohesive global regulatory regime, possibly under the auspices of the World Trade Organization. This will land a bit hard on the mining industry initially, but over time they will adjust, much like they had do domestically within Canada and the U.S., which incidentally delineates a whopping list of 675 pollutants as illegal, including all the pollutants from coal, metal, and non-metal mining activities. Canada is at a crossroads. We can choose to be pragmatic and stop our antagonism against the rise of progressive politics in South America, or we can keep digging ourselves deeper down the rabbit hole of free-market fundamentalism. One hopes it’s the former. After all, in congratulating Gustavo Petro and Francia Marques on their electoral victory, Prime Minister Trudeau did tweet, “I’m looking forward to working with you both on priorities like democracy, gender equality, and climate action.” Promoting regulation of the mining industry might be a good place to start putting those words into action. Bhagwant Sandhu is a retired director general with the federal government. He is a community organizer with a keen interest in Canadian foreign policy issues. The Hill Times