This is The Week in Polling, your Saturday dose of interesting numbers from top pollsters in Canada and around the world, curated by The Hub. Here’s what we’re looking at this week.

Canadians think Justin Trudeau is the worst prime minister since 1968

When put up against all of the prime ministers since the start of his father, Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s, tenure in the late sixties, current prime minister Justin Trudeau was rated the worst by more than a third of Canadians. To add insult to injury, 14 percent of those who voted for Justin as the worst prime minister since 1968 are Liberal voters.

The best prime minister was found to be, funnily enough, the elder Trudeau, with 18 percent of the vote. Canada’s previous prime minister, Stephen Harper, trailed him by just two points.

It has been over a month since Venezuela’s much-contested presidential election that has led to mass unrest and sweeping government crackdowns. Following the July 28 vote, incumbent president Nicolas Maduro’s United Socialist Party was declared the winner by the National Electoral Council, an entity packed with hand-picked government loyalists. Opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia claims the election was stolen and that he has the evidence to prove that he won more than double the votes as Maduro.

Since the disputed election results were announced, protests have erupted all over Venezuela, leading to mass arrests and state violence against demonstrators, activists, and members of the opposition.

Caught up in the unrest has been María Oropeza, a lawyer, chapter leader of the Ladies of Liberty Alliance (LOLA) in the state of Portuguesa, and the campaign manager for González’s presidential campaign. She was arrested the night of August 6th after posting a viral video criticizing the Venezuelan government’s arbitrary detention tactic Operación Tun Tun, also known as “Operation Knock Knock.” She live-streamed her arrest on Instagram as Venezuela’s military counterintelligence agency broke into her residence and took her away. She has been charged with terrorism and incitement to hatred.

LOLA representatives have requested that the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issue a resolution to grant precautionary measures to guarantee Oropeza’s well-being. It was granted several days after her arrest.

The Hub was pleased to speak to Ana Karina Rizo, a Venezuelan Canadian lawyer and president of LOLA, about Oropeza’s detention, as well as the political, economic, and social realities that everyday Venezuelans are facing amid the political crisis.

The following has been condensed and edited for clarity.

THE HUB: Just to put some context for our readers, how about we start with some basic background information: Who is María Oropeza? What was her role with LOLA? What was she charged with, and why was she detained?

ANA KARINA RIZO: Well, María Oropeza is the chapter leader of the Ladies of Liberty Alliance in the state of Portuguesa. And in addition to that, she has been very involved with the political party that went against Nicolas Maduro in the previous election. She’s very close to María Corina Machado, who is the main leader of this political party. She has been involved in politics for more than 10 years of her life at this point…She was very vocal against the government, and she was the person organizing most of the political movement for the opposition in her state of Portuguesa. And the reason why she was detained is because of her political dissent.

THE HUB: According to credible human rights organizations, some 2,000 people, including minors and young children, have been arrested during the recent protests. One major political prison is El Helcoide, where María is currently being detained. Can you explain to readers the history of this place and what imprisonment might be like there?

ANA KARINA RIZO: Well, you know that the interesting fact about El Helicoide is that it was meant to be an infrastructure that was supposed to represent something completely different from what it ended up becoming. Because the idea behind El Helicoide was to be one of the biggest shopping malls in Latin America, something completely postmodern back in the day; something that would represent Venezuela’s progress in the hemisphere. And what Chavismo (the political movement created by the late president Hugo Chávez) and the communists did is to pretty much turn it into a torture centre. So, you can imagine this massive infrastructure and how much space they have for that.

The worst part is that the Chavismo threatened to have more re-education camps and two more prisons built only for political prisoners. So, what the Chavismo are indicating is that they are not planning to stop. They are planning to actually continue in their crackdown, in cracking down on democracy in every way they can. So, they’re just making even more space for that. Even before the current unrest they already had about 300 political prisoners in El Helicoide. But there are other political detention centres used for torture.

Regarding conditions, they keep up to 10 women in one cell. They are thrown cold water during the day, and they are threatened that they’re gonna remain there forever because they’re “terrorists.” They give just one bucket to all these women to comply with their hygiene. They do that daily. So, they are under very unsanitary conditions. They face psychological torture. They face physical torture because the cells are actually quite cold. They suffer malnutrition because they barely get food, and what they do get is not the nutritional value that they need. Some cells are underground so you never know if it is night or day. In previous cases where political prisoners have been released from there, they have very bad health conditions, with some of them showing signs of sexual abuse. So, it’s a very horrible situation, as you can imagine.

THE HUB: A big part of the story here is the role of Venezuelan women. Maduro’s main opposition is María Corina Machado, who was banned from running in the presidential election. Can you elaborate on the role and importance of women in this political crisis and how they may be targeted differently because of their gender?

ANA KARINA RIZO: Venezuela has been a country where the Chavismo, particularly, have underestimated the power and influence of Venezuelan women. They did that in the past also when one of the opponents of Hugo Chávez was Irene Sáez. She was a political figure in Venezuela and also Miss Venezuela, then later on Miss Universe. She then became the governor of one of our states, Nueva Esparta, and she ran for president against Hugo Chávez in 1998. And something interesting is that basically everyone who was attacking her, they did it on the basis of, “Oh, you’re just a pretty face. You’re just a woman who is pretty and a beauty queen, of course you cannot run a country.”

So, we see examples of machismo in Venezuelan political society. Of course, María Corina Machado has also been a target of that. But what we have been seeing in the last few years is that the Chavismo are actually scared of female leadership. If you think about it, they not only banned María Corina—later on, the person that she actually assigned to run in the presidential election on behalf of Vente Venezuela was not originally Edmundo, it was Corina Yoris Villasana. She was the person who was going to run, and Chavismo banned her too, later on. So, then we got Edmundo González Urrutia and they were like, “Okay, let this guy run.” So, they not only banned one woman, they banned two. That tells you that the Chavismo didn’t want a female leader in Venezuela.

Venezuela is a country with a lot of feminine energy. Maybe I say that because I’m Venezuelan myself. But most of the things that people think about Venezuela are like, “Oh, the beauty queens and the beautiful women.” But you know, actually, Venezuela has one the largest numbers of female scientists globally, not just in Latin America. So we represent a very powerful force in our country, and I think that the Chavismo are scared of that.

As I mentioned previously, women are more vulnerable when they are assaulted in protest. Like if we are physically attacked, of course, we face more vulnerability because we have less of a chance of defending ourselves. And in addition to that, when women are arrested, they are more likely to face sexual abuse and sexual torture compared to men. Even though men face it too, in many cases. Also, for women, we have the issue of menstruating. The women who are arrested are not receiving any pads, tampons, nothing. They just receive a little pot of water, and that’s it.

THE HUB: Are outside sanctions the answer to resolving this crisis? Do they help civilians like María?

ANA KARINA RIZO: Sanctions are only a measure. They try to help. And I feel it’s more like a statement of a country saying, “I don’t want anything to do with you, because you are a terrorist state at this point,” which Venezuela can honestly qualify as one. One reason being that they have been involved in the drug business to fund terrorism in the Middle East, for example.  So do sanctions really help civilians in Venezuela? The answer is no, they don’t help individuals.

But sanctions do put pressure on governments, in the sense that you make it more difficult for them to move their money around in the financial sector. I know because I used to work in anti-money laundering, and sanctions are one tool.

Venezuela never had…a comprehensive sanctions program from the United States, like the ones imposed on Iran, for example, or North Korea. But Venezuela certainly has had designated individuals sanctioned. We’re also talking about business alongside mere individuals that are involved in the government. So, that’s the approach that the United States took.

Do I think that the Maduro government is going to fall because of sanctions? Not really, but do I think that countries like Canada and the U.S. should actually distance themselves from Venezuela and say, “I don’t want to do any business with you” Because if they do, that’s money that, as we can see, the Maduro regime uses to oppress people. So, certainly, you are feeding a dictatorship the moment you do business with them.

For civilians like María, we do things like this interview. We talk about the problem, and we try to create awareness. But realistically speaking, unless Venezuelans literally get access to guns and have ways of actually fighting back, I don’t see how we’re going to get rid of this regime, because we’re talking about a regime that is completely totalitarian at this point.

Just yesterday, they changed the government cabinet, and they just made the changes in a way that they could even become more oppressive. Now, they have all the tools to oppress people, and that means using the military, using counterintelligence, and all that. So, unless there is a way to help Venezuelans from outside, either with guns or to take these people out by force, I don’t see how the situation is going to be solved.

THE HUB: There have been some who claim that criticism against Maduro is a form of North American or Western imperialism employed to access oil and resources, or that this crisis was thanks to historic Western imperialism in the region and the ongoing “economic terrorism” of the U.S. sanctions. What is your response to that?

ANA KARINA RIZO: My opinion is that they are useful idiots, as the Soviet Union used to call them. Because what they are repeating is the same propaganda that the government has repeated for years and years in Venezuela. But what we have seen is that the only imperialism that Venezuela felt during those years was literally the alliances with Cuba, Russia, Iran, and China. Like, those are the countries that have been involved in Venezuela. The countries that are involved in extracting and taking away our resources are these countries.

So, I don’t know where they’re getting the fact that the U.S. wants to do this or wants to do that. It is these other nations that are taking our resources and, in exchange, are feeding this dictatorship that is murdering and killing people. So, honestly, I think that even if you ask the average Venezuelan, “Do you care more about oil or about your freedom?” they’re going to say, “We don’t care about oil. Just give our freedom back.” Because people are desperate. People are desperate to have an option for a change. It’s been 25 years already. Like, this is enough.

THE HUB: Since 2014, approximately 7.7 million Venezuelans have fled the country. Just for context, that is about a quarter of the population. Since the recent presidential election, there have been reports and concerns that there will be major increases in migration not only in South America but perhaps even northwards. Can you comment on how Venezuelans leaving not only impacts the Americas as a whole but also Venezuela itself?

ANA KARINA RIZO: Let’s put it in context. We’re talking about a country that has approximately 28 million people. Imagine having 7.7 million abroad. That is a huge number. I went to Venezuela not so long ago and I can tell you, a lot of people there are old. A lot of people are old because a lot of young people left. That creates such a gap because you’re missing people who are in their productive years. So, how do you build a country when you are missing people within their productive years? We’re talking about brain drain. We are talking about labour. We’re talking about the prosperity of a country at the end of the day, the future of a country.

Under a dictatorship, people are going to be more desperate right now to leave. Because it’s confirmed there is a dictatorship, it’s confirmed that this government is not leaving, it’s confirmed that they are completely totalitarian. And I have seen that conversation among my friends who are still living in Venezuela, and they say, “I’m giving this a chance until this month, and then I will leave, even if I have to go walking through Colombia.”

Why? Because they feel terrified. So, the migration situation will only get worse. This will become a regional problem, because immigration, per se, is something good, but mass immigration of refugees, that’s not good. That’s actually very harmful, especially for developing Latin American countries.

Just to put it into context, I think that Venezuela right now has even more refugees abroad than a country like Afghanistan. Let that sink in. So, imagine how much of a disaster this situation has been. This disaster will impact Canada as well. People think, “Oh, because we are up north, we are untouchable.” No. When you see the current border situation in the U.S., many of the people who are desperate to get in are Venezuelans who go walking all the way through Central America. They cross the Darién Gap, which is this very dangerous territory between Panama and Colombia, risking their lives.

And many of them made it. I remember New York’s mayor [Eric Adams] said, “Oh, this is a sanctuary city. You can come here. Everyone is welcome.” And what did he do? He put Venezuelans in buses and sent them to the border with Quebec because he couldn’t accommodate that many of them.

THE HUB: You have been in contact with Maria’s family. What is something they would like the public to know about her? And more broadly, about Venezuelans and Venezuela in general?

ANA KARINA RIZO: They want people to share stories of María, to keep her present. And they are not remaining silent. They have taken a different approach. They want to talk about María as much as possible. From the Ladies of Liberty Alliance, we launched a campaign to collect funds for María’s family. I’m in contact with them almost every day.

And yes, of course, they are sad. Her mom, particularly, is in despair because they come from a rural area. They are not a wealthy family, actually, just the opposite. Her mom needs to be in Caracas, which is a very expensive city for the average Venezuelan, as she is just trying and begging and looking for ways to see her daughter. She hasn’t been able to see her daughter. They haven’t been able to put her in contact with María.

What they want others to know is what the situation is, and to please keep María present. Let’s keep this story going because María was charged with terrorism and incitement to hatred, and both charges combined can be a sentence of up to 30 years for a very unjust situation.

As to the second part of the question, my friend María’s opinion, because we talked about it before, would be that she would like to let people know that Venezuelans are actually very brave, and we literally want liberty. That’s what we want. Venezuelans are not the kind of people who want to immigrate, because actually, Venezuela was a country that historically received immigration, not the other way around.

So, for many Venezuelans, what they want is a country with stability, because, believe me, many of these people that you see crossing Central America, given the opportunity, they will head back. Many people who are right now in Peru or in Colombia, struggling, will go back.

Venezuelans are patriotic, and Venezuelans really want their liberty back, because they want to build a country. There’s no better place than a place where you can be with your own culture, and that’s why María never left.