This is part 2 in a series. For part 1, click here.

Hugo Chávez first stormed the spotlight in Venezuela as the leader of an unsuccessful coup attempt against the government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1992. Realizing that the coup had failed, Chávez admitted defeat on national television, famously vowing to try again before being shipped off to prison.

According to the ethical oil version of history, the story essentially stops here: an aspiring dictator attempts to seize power and fuel his despotic rule with ill-gotten oil money. Though Chávez would only take office in 1999 in democratic elections, he wore the authoritarian label until the end of his days. As usual, however, reality is more complex than the Canadian oil lobby would have you believe.

Venezuela before Chávez was a country marred by corruption, poverty and institutional decay, administered by a two-party oligarchy that took turns in power. Long kept afloat by oil revenues, the economy went into crisis in the 1980s as petroleum prices fell. President Pérez responded in 1989 by reversing his election promises and enacting IMF-mandated market reforms, including a wave of mass privatizations and the removal of crucial food and fuel subsidies. During the resulting rioting among the urban poor, Pérez called in the army, killing over 3,000 civilians in what came to be known as the Caracazo massacre.

Chávez emerged as a leader out of the turmoil of Caracazo and the Venezuelan resistance movement against austerity. Privatization and market reforms have a long and ignoble history on the South American continent; they tend to be imposed through the barrel of a gun.

From Pinochet’s bloody 1973 coup in Chile to the Argentinian military junta, violent state repression has often been used to accomplish what democracy could not: the elimination of social protections and the selling off of state assets to foreign investors.

After his election in 1999, Chávez sought to chart a different course for Venezuela, and he began by calling a constituent assembly to create a new constitution. The constitutional process, which incorporated indigenous groups, women’s rights advocates and urban social movements, produced an ambitious document that was approved by nearly 80 percent of the population in a referendum.

The drafting of the new constitution began a contradictory process that would define Chávez’s presidency. One the one hand, new mechanisms for direct democracy alongside commitments to health care, education and welfare empowered millions of deeply impoverished Venezuelans formerly shut out of politics. On the other hand, the staunch opposition of the oligarchy, supported by anti-Chávez media both at home and abroad, meant that Chávez often resorted to moves like stacking the judiciary in order to maintain his power in office.

Many of the programs implemented under Chávez were innovative attempts at addressing long-entrenched social problems. He created a vast series of reforms called Bolivarian Missions that opened free medical clinics, massively expanded social housing, improved literacy rates and worked to reform land rights and establish food sovereignty.

While these social programs are routinely dismissed as mere patronage handed out by an oil-soaked populist, they functioned as genuine forums for direct democracy, empowering citizens to make decisions about the best uses of government funds through local debate. These programs were not all successful, nor were they able to transform Venezuelan society overnight. But for those they reached, the Bolivarian Missions made a big difference in their lives.   

Like all petro-states, Venezuela is a nation whose politics are defined by its most valuable commodity.

Yet while the petro-states of the Middle East have used their oil wealth to enrich a tiny elite and build vast monuments to unsustainable affluence (e.g., Dubai’s indoor ski resort), Venezuela under Chávez used its control of the nationalized oil industry to make meaningful improvements in the lives of its poorest citizens.

Since Chávez was first elected president in 1999, poverty has fallen from 42.8 percent of households to 26.7 percent, and extreme poverty has declined from 16.6 percent to 7.0 percent. The Gini coefficient, a measurement of wealth inequality, has fallen from 0.469 to 0.39, a drop that makes Venezuela’s income distribution the most equal in Latin America.

The routine demonization of Chávez by his ideological opponents, including the ethical oil camp, doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Dismissed as an elected dictator, Chávez repeatedly won re-election in polls that Former US President Jimmy Carter has rated as the freest and fairest in the world. Accused of taking over the media and silencing his critics, Chávez’s state-run broadcaster actually commands a mere 5-8 percent of market share.

The corporate media, by contrast, is staunchly opposed to his redistributive policies, and played a key role in fomenting a coup attempt against him in 2002. That coup was only stopped when hundreds of thousands of Chávez supporters took to the streets demanding the president’s return to office.

Venezuela under Chávez was no socialist paradise, and the road ahead for the country will be difficult. It faces high rates of violent crime, rising inflation and diminished revenues from oil production—not to mention deep ideological divisions over the future of the country.

But neither was Chávez’s Venezuela the embodiment of evil that Ezra Levant would have us believe.

No matter how you evaluate Chávez’s legacy, he can no longer function as the cartoon villain that legitimizes the tar sands.

Canada is facing a series of stark choices about its energy future. The choice is not between green, friendly Canadian bitumen and the tar of tyrants. Oil markets make those decisions without a single thought for ethics. If we’re going to face up to the reality of climate change, it’s time to stop pointing fingers abroad.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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This post is the first in a two-part series. For Part 2, click here.

In death as in life, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez has provoked more than his fair share of criticism and commentary in Canada. When the elected socialist leader died on March 5th after a two-year struggle with cancer, Canadians were quick to offer their condolences—with varying degrees of tact.

Former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien reminisced about Chávez’s fondness for baseball, and noted his frank willingness to criticize the United States. NDP member of Parliament Paul Dewar extended his sympathies to the Chávez family and affirmed the ongoing relationship between Canada and Venezuela.

At the current Prime Minister’s Office, Stephen Harper painted Chávez’s death as an opportunity for the people of Venezuela to “build for themselves a better, brighter future based on the principles of freedom, democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights.” This statement drew a formal complaint from the Venezuelan government, criticizing Harper for making “insensitive and impertinent statements” while the country grieves. 

Harper had long considered Chávez to be an ideological opponent and an obstacle to progress in the Western Hemisphere, feelings he made clear in a 2009 Postmedia News interview before the Summit of the Americas. During the interview, Harper described Chávez as the leader of “an authoritarian state run on petro dollars” who was “opposed to basically sound economic policies.”

In less enlightened quarters of Canadian politics, responses to the Venezuelan President’s death were not nearly so measured. From Sun Media’s charming correspondent Ezra Levant, Chávez earned himself three words: “burn in hell.” 

Why does the death of Chávez mark the beginning of a new, brighter era in the mind of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and the start of an eternity of torment according to Ezra Levant? The answer might have something to do with oil.

Venezuela is a petro-state that sits on the largest known oil reserves in the world: 17.9 percent, compared to Saudi Arabia’s 16.1 percent and Canada’s 11 percent. But despite the country’s vast reserves, current production sits at only 3.5 percent of global output. Low production rates and limited exploration of new fields have been attributed to the mismanagement of Venezuela’s national oil company, PDVSA.

Immediately following Chávez’s death, speculation began about the prospects for international investors seeking to reenter Venezuela’s nationalized energy sector—a development that could mean increased competition for producers in Alberta’s tar sands.

But for proponents of the tar sands, Venezuela is more than just competition; it’s a key selling point for Canadian oil. As the now-familiar refrain of the Ethical Oil Institute goes, Canada’s oil is ethical, while the oil produced in countries like Venezuela is ethically-compromised conflict oil. The worse Chávez looks, the better the Canadian alternative.

Ethical oil is a made-in-Canada campaign developed to distract the attention of Canadians away from the tar sands by pointing fingers abroad. But as the planned pipeline shipment of Alberta bitumen to refineries in the United States becomes increasingly contentious south of the border, the campaign is finding new life as a popular export product. Gary Doer, Canada’s Ambassador to the US, recently rolled out the ethical oil talking points to help galvanize support for the Keystone XL pipeline in the United States.

For Doer, the choice is a clear one: either we support the heinous Hugo Chávez or Alberta Premier Alison Redford. The demonization of Hugo Chávez has long been a feature of the ethical oil sales campaign, reinforced in no small measure by the international media. With Chávez gone and the future of Venezuela uncertain, it’s worth taking a closer look at his legacy to see if the former president deserves to live on as an accidental salesman for Canadian oil. 

Image Credit: que comunismo via flickr.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

We’ve heard it all before: get your oil from Canada, or get it from the devil.

Okay, well, maybe not the devil, but if you aren’t dealing with Canada, you’re dealing with despots, tyrants, oppressors of women and suppressors of democracy.

This is the pervasive pseudo-logic brought to us by conservative commentator and Sun News correspondent Ezra Levant. In his book Ethical Oil, which eventually grew into the Ethical Oil Institute, Levant poses Canadians with a false dichotomy: either we support Canada’s ethical oil – which is democratically developed in an environmentally responsible way – or we support conflict oil.

The argument is a classical for-or-against proposition meant to polarize Canadians on a complex issue. And it is Canada’s latest export to America.

In the current media volley between American and Canadian leaders on President Obama’s upcoming decision to either approve or deny the Keystone XL pipeline border crossing, this deceptive ‘you’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists’ argument is on the loose, begging the overall question: is Canada taking its talking points straight out of the Ethical Oil playbook?

Let’s begin with Canada’s Ambassador to the US – Gary Doer. During the February 17th Forward on Climate rally in Washington DC – the largest climate change rally in US history – Doer claimed protestors lacked “logic.”

The ‘outspoken minority’ who oppose the Keystone XL, said Doer, don’t express American wishes; they just happen to get more media attention than the “65 percent of Americans that prefer to get their oil from Canada rather than Venezuela or the Middle East.”

Doer followed up with an interview this week with Postmedia News where he posed the issue this way: “If you ask the question: Do you want your oil from Hugo Chavez or Alison Redford, I think I know the answer.”

“If you look at the fundamental criteria for presidential legacies,” Doer said, commenting on the idea that Keystone XL is Obama’s legacy issue, “it’s peace and prosperity.”


“I would argue that that means less reliance on Middle Eastern oil and more jobs building the independence here in North America.”

Doer’s sentiments were echoed this week by Alberta Premier Alison Redford whose column in USA Today stressed “Alberta is the safest, most secure and responsible energy supplier to the US.”

“The same cannot be said for the other foreign countries and regimes that currently feed US energy demand.”

Levant himself has been somewhat more forthcoming with his thoughts on the subject, claiming nearly one year ago that the Keystone XL is “a pretty straight swap of Canadian ethical oil for Venezuelan conflict oil. And Obama chose Hugo Chavez over us.”

“Blocking the Keystone XL isn’t going to stop a single American car trip. It will simply ensure that car is fuelled by Hugo Chavez and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who must have been popping champagne while laughing at Obama on TV.”

Around the same time Ethical Oil spokesman Jamie Ellerton wrote “every drop of Venezuelan oil that Americans buy, is more money that ends up helping Venezuela to help support Syria’s massacre of its own people. Conflict oil is fuelling more conflict.”

As much as a year ago, conservative staffer and Ethical Oil campaigner Alykhan Velshi suggested “Americans are still stuck supporting…Chavez. Sanctions won’t stop that; working on replacing every last drop of Chavez’s Conflict Oil with Canada’s Ethical Oil, will.”

The argument loses full steam however, when you consider Canada imports a tremendous amount of Venezuelan crude. That’s right – imports.

As reported yesterday by DeSmogBlog’s Kevin Grandia, “a May 2011 Natural Resources Canada report notes that Canada imported 33,000 barrels per day of crude oil from Venezuela in 2009. That works out to about 12 million barrels of oil that year.”

Those imports were valued at $778 million for the year and made up roughly 86 percent of Canada’s total imports from Venezuela.

As Grandia notes, Canada imports oil from other countries – like Algeria, Angola, Iraq and Nigeria – that suffer worse human rights records than Venezuela.

So Canada, if anything, represents a layover for Venezuelan oil.

And Canada’s oil (whether developed domestically or imported), like any other oil, is merely looking for a cheap and easy access to the global market, where it can fetch a higher price.

Albertan oil is landlocked and desperately needs an export strategy. Canada isn’t offering the US an ethical escape from conflict oil. We’re just looking for a path – any path – to an export terminal. And if the US allows it, we’ll track our oily footprints all over the national carpet on our way. 

Americans should be on their guard against Canada’s dirty exports – whether of the bituminous or rhetorical kind.

Image Credit: visionshare via flickr.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.