ABSTRACT
Over the past few years, Canada has stepped up to the plate in hemispheric affairs, to speak and act forcefully, as former Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland put it, in solidarity with ‘the people of Venezuela and their desire to restore democracy and human rights in Venezuela’. What has caused this surge of intensity in Canadian foreign policy towards one Latin American country? The main answer is that the Venezuela crisis is genuinely exceptional, and as such it has called for immediate and forceful action. It represents an opportunity for Canada and most countries in the region to act multilaterally and as equals, independently (in fact ahead) of the United States. For Canada, it is also an opportunity to engage significantly in its own hemisphere, where the relative absence of hard interest usually commands disengagement. In a way, Canadian foreign policy towards Venezuela can be seen as an experiment for its human rights and democracy promotion agenda, and for its relatively new interest for ad hoc multilateralism, in a region where Canada has often expressed the desire to be more relevant, without knowing exactly how.
