| When you walk through downtown Caracas, the capital city of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez is everywhere. Street vendors flog T-shirts proudly displaying a portrait of the President sporting a red military beret and a knowing smile. Bright red banners fly from the tops of decaying apartment blocks that soar 30 stories over the city streets, advertising the governmental "missions" of Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement. Expansive shantytown barrios ring the city of eight million. Here there is an air of hope in the impoverished working class majority. It is a hope founded on the charismatic Hugo Chavez and his expanding social programs targeted specifically at the poor.
Chavez was elected President of Venezuela in December of 1998 on a platform of revolutionary change. Venezuelan governments of the ’90s had re-opened the national oil industry to foreign capital at low rates of taxation and cut social programming dramatically, resulting in an increasing burden on the poor and limited access to essential services such as health care and education. Aiming to redistribute oil revenues to the poor, Chavez quickly made significant changes. First, he created a constituent assembly that overwhelmingly approved the new Bolivarian Constitution of 1999, guaranteeing access to a number of services, such as health care, as basic human rights. Chavez doubled education spending and established seven highly publicized "missions" including programs to fight illiteracy, fund university education, community health care and food distribution. Recently, Chavez has extended his social spending even further, resulting in a decrease in poverty rates from a high of 60.94 per cent of the population in early 1997, down to 43.70 per cent at the end of 2005 (as reported by the Venezuelan National Statistic Institute: INE, Republica Bolivariana de Venezuela). While poverty rates remain high, a 17 per cent decrease is a promising sign.
Although Chavez is making a mark on poverty, critics worry about his ultimate goals. For instance, on January 31, 2007, Venezuela’s National Assembly passed an "enabling law" that allows the president to rule by decree in 11 broad areas of society in order to speed up the country’s transition to "21st century socialism." This law, which expires in 18 months, has been portrayed by some as indicative of a movement towards dictatorship over democracy. However, Chavez has already utilized the enabling law twice before during his presidency in order to expedite the rights granted in the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution and is the fifth Venezuelan president to invoke an enabling law. While concerns about abuse of power are legitimate, claims of dictatorial activity ignore historical evidence. If Chavez follows the historical pattern, he will use the law to promote the social development goals of his government rather than for personal ambitions.
In light of Chavez’s newly granted powers, and the fact that Venezuela is a sovereign nation while Alberta is a province of Canada, comparing Venezuela to Alberta may seem problematic. However, the two territories share key similarities. In both cases, extensive public welfare programs were established in the ’60s and ’70s. Both have large reserves of "unconventional" extra-heavy crude oil that require specialized technologies for extraction and processing. Both territories have been historically dependent upon petroleum production as the driving force of the economy and both governments have seen oil revenues increase significantly in recent years. Thus, while Alberta and Venezuela differ on many accounts, they are comparable in terms of governmental reliance upon oil and rapidly increasing state oil revenues.
The success of Chavez in using high oil prices to combat poverty stands in glaring contrast to the use of oil money here in Alberta. Following a 20 per cent cut to social spending in 1994, efforts to fight poverty have been limited in Alberta. In fact, in Alberta, the percentage of the population living below the low-income cut-off has risen. While Statistics Canada reports that 13.8 per cent of Albertans lived below the low-income cut-off in 2000, the Pembina Institute for Appropriate Development suggests that by 2003, 19.8 per cent of Albertans lived beneath the low-income cut-off. Furthermore, a 2006 report by Campaign 2000 states that "Even with a booming economy, Alberta’s child poverty rate is double digit and has fluctuated between 14 per cent and 15 per cent since 1999." Thus, poverty continues to be a problem in Alberta despite considerable increases in governmental revenues over recent years.
As the Alberta government enters 2007 with a projected $4.1 billion surplus there is little talk of targeting poverty. Instead, the government states that the surplus "will be primarily allocated to savings and paying for capital investment" in infrastructure projects such as highways and health-care facilities. This statement, coupled with the increasing prevalence of poverty in the province, points to a lack of interest in alleviating poverty for those in the province who need it most. While the government saves money for the future, its poor population suffers today.
Perhaps the government of Alberta could learn a lesson from Hugo Chavez and begin to spend its oil money to raise the standard of living for all of its residents. While Chavez targets the lower class with increased funding that is proving to help alleviate poverty, Alberta seems to have forgotten about the impoverished members of its population and allows them to continue to live in poverty with little hope for the future. Maybe Alberta could use a man like Hugo Chavez. |
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