Canada is considering convening a high-level meeting of the Lima Group to refocus efforts to bring about a democratic transition in Venezuela following days of drama at the National Assembly in Caracas.
The man Canada considers Venezuela’s legitimate president, Juan Guiado, was able to take his seat in the legislature this month in spite of attempts by the government of Nicolas Maduro to keep him out.
And the move to prevent opposition deputies from taking their seats by surrounding the building with police appeared to backfire on Maduro, when it was condemned by Latin American governments normally considered sympathetic to Venezuela’s “Bolivarian revolution.”
A Canadian official speaking on background told CBC News that Ottawa interprets the decision of the Mexican government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to sign one of two Lima Group statements condemning the Maduro government as a sign that the hemispheric coalition Ottawa helped build to oppose Maduro hasn’t completely fractured.
Venezuelan paramilitary police used force to try to keep the opposition majority out of the National Assembly, injuring four deputies slightly and tearing Opposition Leader Guaido’s suit jacket. But they seemed reluctant to go beyond pushing, shoving, and trying to bar doors.
When a crush of opposition deputies finally succeeded in pushing open the main door of the legislative palace, police gave way.
Guaido and his supporters — all elected in the last Venezuelan election to be recognized by Canada as legitimate — rushed into the chamber and quickly swore Guaido into office for a second term as president of the National Assembly.
Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro waves as he arrives at the National Constituent Assembly’s building during the celebration rally of the 20th anniversary of the Venezuelan Constitution in Caracas, Venezuela, on Dec. 15, 2019. (Matias Delacroix/The Associated Press)
The opposition has argued that, under Venezuela’s constitution, Guaido’s role as assembly president also makes him president of the republic, because the claims to office of Maduro and his vice-president, Delcy Rodriguez, are based on the results of a fraudulent election in 2018. Canada, which also rejected the results of the 2018 election, supports that position.
The Maduro regime’s reluctance to use greater force against the pro-Guaido deputies may reflect the fact that the U.S. has repeatedly warned Venezuela that any move to arrest or harm Guaido would cross a red line.
“I think you would see even additional action far beyond what we have pushed out to date” if there were a move to detain Guaido, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Cuba and Venezuela Carrie Filipetti, told reporters at the U.S. Embassy in Colombia on Tuesday.
Maduro’s allies
The events cap a year in which the opposition began strongly, but then seemed to lose momentum, as regional shifts of power brought cracks to the Lima Group alliance of nations.
The Lima Group was set up in August 2017 in response to a violent crackdown on dissent in Venezuela. It united Canada with the biggest nations of Latin America: Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Colombia, but excluded the United States.
That exclusion reflected an important difference of opinion: the U.S. was unwilling to rule out the use of military force to eject the Maduro government, while Lima Group members said they were committed to peaceful change.
In this Feb. 2, 2019 file photo, anti-government protesters take part in a nationwide demonstration demanding the resignation of President Nicolas Maduro, in Caracas, Venezuela. (Rodrigo Abd/The Associated Press)
Taken together, the Lima Group governments and the U.S. represented about 95 per cent of the people of the hemisphere, while the Maduro government enjoyed the support of a handful of smaller nations: Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia and El Salvador (along with Russia and China).
But 2019 would bring changes that took some of the heat off Maduro.
When Guaido took the presidential oath on Jan. 23, 2019, he received an avalanche of recognition from about 60 countries. Canada was the second to extend recognition, but Lima Group founding member Mexico, the world’s most populous Spanish-speaking country, held back.
That was because eight weeks before Guaido’s assumption, a new president had taken Mexico in a new, leftward, direction. President Andres Lopez Obrador (often known as AMLO) replaced Enrique Peña Nieto, whose government had a mostly positive relationship with the Trudeau government and was an early backer of the Lima Group.
AMLO gave an early sign that Mexico’s position would be changing when he invited Maduro to personally attend his inauguration.
Another Lima Group dropout was Argentina, where voters turned against Trudeau ally Mauricio Macri, and restored to power a Peronist government that has historically been close to Maduro and former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez (and had once received a suitcase full of cash as an illegal campaign contribution from its friends in Caracas).
The inauguration of that new government last month effectively took Argentina out of the Lima Group.
Region condemns the move
But the decision to bar elected deputies from their seats seems to have been a bridge too far for some of Maduro’s Latin American allies.
Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard joined the chorus of condemnation over this week’s attempted closure of Venezuela’s elected assembly, saying “the legitimate functioning of the legislative branch is an inviolable pillar of democracies.”
Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, pictured on Jan. 12, invited Maduro to attend his inauguration. (Christian Chavez/The Associated Press)
Argentina’s Foreign Minister Felipe Sola condemned the closure of the National Assembly as “exactly the opposite” of what the Maduro government should be doing.
“To use force to prevent the functioning of the National Assembly is to condemn oneself to international isolation. We reject this,” wrote Sola.
Diosdado Cabello, a leading figure of the Maduro government and host of a nightly program on Venezuelan state television, denounced the former allies in harsh terms.
“If the ambassador of Argentina or Mexico said some ‘Guai-idiocy’, we’re still here and we don’t need Argentina or its foreign minister. They’ll see where they end up in history. Whether they choose to defend the people, or if they choose to be on the side of those who live slavishly following imperialism,” said Cabello.
Meanwhile U.S. Special Envoy for Venezuela Elliott Abrams appeared to exult in the new divisions among governments that had previously supported Maduro. “Maduro must be asking himself today, ‘Do I have any allies left?’ (Argentina and Mexico) are not going to support those kinds of measures. They’re going to denounce those kinds of measures.
“He is left with Cuba, Russia, China, and a few odd dictatorships around the world, but he is losing the support not only on the right, not only in the centre, but on the left in Latin America.”
If the Maduro government’s new allies proved disappointing, the regime also lost some of its strongest old allies. President Evo Morales of Bolivia — perhaps the closest Maduro ally after the Cuban Communist Party — fled his country in November following violent protests alleging electoral fraud.
Opposition troubles
But if this month’s events seemed to turn in Guaido’s favour, it doesn’t change the fact that Maduro remains in control not only of Miraflores, the presidential palace, but also of the country’s armed forces and national police.
People have continued to flee Venezuela at a rate of about 3,000 to 5,000 per day, said William Spindler of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees office in Panama.
“The latest figures we have are for December 5,” he told CBC News, adding that the number of 4,769,000 Venezuelan refugees is almost certainly an underestimate “because it counts only those who have registered with governments.”
Canada has also received several thousand Venezuelan asylum claims.
Opposition Leader Juan Guaido waves as he leaves a speaking event with supporters in the Montalban neighbourhood of Caracas on Saturday. Venezuelans are deciding whether to heed Guaido’s call for a new round of protests amid skepticism that he can still mobilize large numbers. (Matias Delacroix/The Associated Press)
Despite the humanitarian crisis, the opposition has been hurt by corruption scandals. About 10 members of the opposition bloc in the assembly, once 110 members strong, have switched sides to support the government.
Deputies have not been paid in almost four years, and some say they have received offers of payments between $750,000 and $1 million US from deputies loyal to the Maduro government if they agree to “jump the gate” as Venezuelans refer to changing sides in the country’s polarized political conflict.
Many current and former opposition deputies are in exile, in prison, in hiding, or have sought refuge in foreign embassies to avoid arrest.
Luis Parra was expelled from Guaido’s party after he was implicated by Venezuelan investigative news site Armandoinfo.com for a campaign to help regime-affiliated businessmen escape sanctions for their role in profiteering from Venezuela’s hunger crisis.
Congressmen who wrote letters on behalf of those businessmen are known in Venezuela as the “CLAP deputies.” (Venezuela’s food rationing program is known by its Spanish acronym CLAP, and the monthly rations that millions of Venezuelans depend on are called “CLAP boxes.”)
Guaido and other opposition leaders moved swiftly to expel the CLAP deputies, but the scandal nonetheless disillusioned Venezuelans weary of the venality of their political class.
The failure to deliver on the high hopes of change he sparked last year has also chipped away at Guaido’s approval rate, which fell from over 60 per cent in Spring to about 40 per cent by the end of 2019, according to respected Caracas polling agency Datanalisis. (Maduro’s approval is lower — about 14 per cent according to the same pollster.)
But there are signs a renewed effort could be underway.
Just before Christmas, the U.S. Senate passed the VERDAD Act (Venezuela Emergency Relief, Democracy Assistance, and Development Act of 2019), which assigns $400 million US to the Venezuelan opposition and to humanitarian assistance to Venezuelans both inside and outside the country.
REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.
Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.
She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.
Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.
Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.
The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
Telus Corp. says it is avoiding offering “unprofitable” discounts as fierce competition in the Canadian telecommunications sector shows no sign of slowing down.
The company said Friday it had fewer net new customers during its third quarter compared with the same time last year, as it copes with increasingly “aggressive marketing and promotional pricing” that is prompting more customers to switch providers.
Telus said it added 347,000 net new customers, down around 14.5 per cent compared with last year. The figure includes 130,000 mobile phone subscribers and 34,000 internet customers, down 30,000 and 3,000, respectively, year-over-year.
The company reported its mobile phone churn rate — a metric measuring subscribers who cancelled their services — was 1.09 per cent in the third quarter, up from 1.03 per cent in the third quarter of 2023. That included a postpaid mobile phone churn rate of 0.90 per cent in its latest quarter.
Telus said its focus is on customer retention through its “industry-leading service and network quality, along with successful promotions and bundled offerings.”
“The customers we have are the most important customers we can get,” said chief financial officer Doug French in an interview.
“We’ve, again, just continued to focus on what matters most to our customers, from a product and customer service perspective, while not loading unprofitable customers.”
Meanwhile, Telus reported its net income attributable to common shares more than doubled during its third quarter.
The telecommunications company said it earned $280 million, up 105.9 per cent from the same three-month period in 2023. Earnings per diluted share for the quarter ended Sept. 30 was 19 cents compared with nine cents a year earlier.
It reported adjusted net income was $413 million, up 10.7 per cent year-over-year from $373 million in the same quarter last year. Operating revenue and other income for the quarter was $5.1 billion, up 1.8 per cent from the previous year.
Mobile phone average revenue per user was $58.85 in the third quarter, a decrease of $2.09 or 3.4 per cent from a year ago. Telus said the drop was attributable to customers signing up for base rate plans with lower prices, along with a decline in overage and roaming revenues.
It said customers are increasingly adopting unlimited data and Canada-U.S. plans which provide higher and more stable ARPU on a monthly basis.
“In a tough operating environment and relative to peers, we view Q3 results that were in line to slightly better than forecast as the best of the bunch,” said RBC analyst Drew McReynolds in a note.
Scotiabank analyst Maher Yaghi added that “the telecom industry in Canada remains very challenging for all players, however, Telus has been able to face these pressures” and still deliver growth.
The Big 3 telecom providers — which also include Rogers Communications Inc. and BCE Inc. — have frequently stressed that the market has grown more competitive in recent years, especially after the closing of Quebecor Inc.’s purchase of Freedom Mobile in April 2023.
Hailed as a fourth national carrier, Quebecor has invested in enhancements to Freedom’s network while offering more affordable plans as part of a set of commitments it was mandated by Ottawa to agree to.
The cost of telephone services in September was down eight per cent compared with a year earlier, according to Statistics Canada’s most recent inflation report last month.
“I think competition has been and continues to be, I’d say, quite intense in Canada, and we’ve obviously had to just manage our business the way we see fit,” said French.
Asked how long that environment could last, he said that’s out of Telus’ hands.
“What I can control, though, is how we go to market and how we lead with our products,” he said.
“I think the conditions within the market will have to adjust accordingly over time. We’ve continued to focus on digitization, continued to bring our cost structure down to compete, irrespective of the price and the current market conditions.”
Still, Canada’s telecom regulator continues to warn providers about customers facing more charges on their cellphone and internet bills.
On Tuesday, CRTC vice-president of consumer, analytics and strategy Scott Hutton called on providers to ensure they clearly inform their customers of charges such as early cancellation fees.
That followed statements from the regulator in recent weeks cautioning against rising international roaming fees and “surprise” price increases being found on their bills.
Hutton said the CRTC plans to launch public consultations in the coming weeks that will focus “on ensuring that information is clear and consistent, making it easier to compare offers and switch services or providers.”
“The CRTC is concerned with recent trends, which suggest that Canadians may not be benefiting from the full protections of our codes,” he said.
“We will continue to monitor developments and will take further action if our codes are not being followed.”
French said any initiative to boost transparency is a step in the right direction.
“I can’t say we are perfect across the board, but what I can say is we are absolutely taking it under consideration and trying to be the best at communicating with our customers,” he said.
“I think everyone looking in the mirror would say there’s room for improvement.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
Two years after the failed launch of a lending program, Canada Post is making another foray into banking services.
The postal service confirmed Friday that it will be offering a chequing and savings account in partnership with Koho Financial Inc.
The accounts will be launched nationally next year, though Canada Post employees will be offered early access as the product is tested.
Canada Post spokeswoman Lisa Liu said in a statement that there are gaps in the banking and savings products available that the Crown corporation looks to fill.
“Canada Post is uniquely positioned to fill some of these demands. Many of our existing financial products help meet the needs of new Canadians and those living in rural, remote and Indigenous communities, but we believe more is required.”
The MyMoney offering will be a spending and savings account where customers will be able to choose between features like high interest rates, cashback rewards and credit-building tools.
A document briefly posted to the Canadian Union of Postal Workers website said it would use a prepaid, reloadable Mastercard that will use money from the account like a debit card but offer the features of a Mastercard.
It said there will be a range of account tiers, including no-fee accounts and paid accounts with more features.
The plans comes after Canada Post launched a lending program with TD Bank Group in late 2022, only to shut it down weeks later because of what it said were processing issues.
Liu said the postal service has since been exploring other possible financial service offerings.
“Utilizing what we’ve learned, we are making a strategic shift from loans toward products more aligned with our core financial service products.”
The new account will be delivered with financial technology company Koho. A few months ago the company paired with Canada Post to allow its customers to deposit cash into their account through post offices.
Koho is also working to secure a Canadian banking license to expand its services.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
