The Lima Group was formed in 2017 by those countries in the Western Hemisphere most desperate to curry favour with the USA. It's purpose is to further the US goal of regime change in Venezuela, an exercise framed as "saving the Venezuelan people from socialism."
Trump's little helper lectures Venezuela on democracy
It therefore comes as no surprise to find this headline at CBC News: Canada, Latin American countries won't recognize Maduro's new government. Nor does it come as a surprise that Mike Pompeo joined this "independent" group of countries via video link at their recent shindig in Peru.
Anyone who cares about Canada's image on the world stage should take a good hard look at who we're throwing our lot in with when we participate in the Lima Group. None of our partners make it into the top ten in the Cato Institute's Human Freedom Index. (Canada is ranked no. 5) In fact, only four of our twelve partners make it into the top fifty!
We're issuing joint declarations with the likes of Honduras and Guatemala! That's bound to make our stock go up in human rights circles! The kind of flowery rhetoric preferred by the Freeland-Trudeau team when addressing human rights concerns could just as well be aimed at most of our "allies" in the Lima Group.
What do we even have in common with Macri's Argentina or Bolsonaro's Brazil? On the face of it, not very much. (Argentina and Brazil rank 107 and 123 on the Human Freedom index and 52/102 on the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index, and both are trending down)
Except for one thing; anti-Trump grandstanding aside, we're as desperate as any of those banana republics to curry favour with the Big Dog in DC.
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