Junior foreign minister Peter Kent voiced strong support over the weekend for the reinstatement of Manuel Zelaya as president of Honduras in advance of a high-level trip to the Central American country to help resolve the nation's eight-week-old coup.
However, while the US and European Union, among others, have suspended diplomatic visas and suspended aid in an effort to apply pressure to Honduras's interim government, Mr. Kent reaffirmed that Canada was not planning any such steps.
It's been more than eight weeks since armed soldiers stormed the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa and forcibly removed Mr. Zelaya from Honduras. This week, Mr. Kent spent two days there with foreign ministers from five other countries on the Organization of American States.
The OAS delegation was to meet with civil society, political parties and church groups to push for an adoption of the San José Accord, which was negotiated by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. Mr. Zelaya accepted the deal, which would return him to power in a unity government, but interim president Roberto Micheletti has refused to allow Mr. Zelaya back into the country. The OAS group's goal was to convince Mr. Micheletti to adopt the accord.
While the Conservative government has joined much of the rest of the world in condemning the coup and calling for a peaceful resolution, it has come under fire for its seemingly lacklustre support for Mr. Zelaya's reinstatement. While the US and most other countries were immediately effusive in demanding Mr. Zelaya be returned to power, Canada's initial responses made no mention of the Honduran president.
In fact, Mr. Kent drew criticism for comments he made to the New York Times the week after the coup.
"The coup was certainly an affront to the region, but there is a context in which these events happened," Mr. Kent told the paper. "There has to be an appreciation of the events that led up to the coup."
Mr. Zelaya was fighting a constitutional clause that limits presidents to a single four-year term and was to hold a referendum on the issue, despite opposition from the country's legislature and supreme court.
Mr. Kent told Embassy on Sunday that the government has always called for Mr. Zelaya to be returned to power. He said such demands began the day of the coup with an emergency meeting of the OAS permanent council.
"We're on the record, it's part of the [OAS] resolution that we passed on July 4 and 5. I've done...many interviews and statements have been issued the past month and a half, two months," Mr. Kent said, adding the reinstatement may be the most essential element for Honduras to regain full membership in the OAS.
"Canada and all other active members of the OAS condemned the military coup and called for the reinstatement of the democratically-elected president, Manuel Zelaya," said Mr. Kent. "We have been constant in that."
While the Conservative government has been criticized for its perceived reluctance to issue a public call for Mr. Zelaya's reinstatement, it has also been targeted for refusing to take a hard stance against the new government.
The US has revoked the Honduran ambassador to Washington's visa for supporting the coup and the EU and the US combined have cut more than $300 million in aid to the country. In contrast, the Canadian government has said it will continue with $16.4 million annual aid to Honduras—including military assistance—and won't impose sanctions.
"This isn't the time to talk about suspending, cutting aid or imposing sanctions," said Mr. Kent. "The purpose of this mission is to come up with an agreement to resolve the crisis because any imposition of sanctions or cutting of aid is going to impact first and foremost the most innocent in this crisis and that is the civilians."
To critics, such a position reaffirms their belief that Canada is not doing enough to see the right-wing coup-installed government removed in favour of a president who is more in line with the Bolivarian camp of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, and who raised the minimum wage 60 per cent
"Being in favour of democracy, being in favour of the reinstatement is fine, but to bring that about, what has Canada's role been?" said John Kirk, a professor of Latin American studies at Dalhousie University.
Mr. Kirk pointed to Canada's continued aid to the country, including $70,000 in military assistance, as showing people they are not taking the coup seriously.
Grahame Russell, who has worked in Honduras since the 1980s, says Canada hasn't done some of the small or symoblic things it should have, like cutting military aid, and reviewing development aid. He says it's up to governments to send a message to those who plotted and led the coup.
But a former Chilean diplomat says Canada's moderate stance has put it in an ideal position to try to broker a compromise.
"It seems to me that the position which Canada finds itself is very much in the middle," said Jorge Heine, the Centre for International Governance Innovation Chair of Global Governance at Wilfrid Laurier University. "It has not come out 100 per cent on the side of President Zelaya and it's been relatively cautious in that it hasn't called for sanctions.
"On the other hand obviously it hasn't sided either with President Micheletti. Thus it is in a privileged position to broker an agreement precisely because it is in the middle."
Mr. Heine places less importance on Mr. Kent's news releases than on the resolutions the Canadian government has supported.
"The main thing here, what we should look for, is the OAS resolution," he said. "That resolution which suspended Honduras from membership, which is the first time this takes place since 1962 when Cuba was suspended, is to my mind is the most significant statement and the most significant document."