0:00  
My dad who is a is still around, is a medical doctor. last 30 years a professor, a postgraduate surgeon, and today he's fighting for his life in ministry. He has been fighting for his life for two days. The problem is that there's no

0:23  
Guillermo de Costa farewell moved to Toronto from Caracas, Venezuela in 1998. He moved here thinking he would eventually go back. But Venezuela's political and social conflict made him stay today. His father is one among the 1000s of Venezuelans. who cannot find more than 90% of basic medicines.

0:56  
Chairs where this sit, okay.

1:08  
What is she doing?

1:11  
She's a journalist and she's interviewing famous guy cuz it's a noisy place. Even the animals are noisy, like even the dogs like whether it's loud music or firecrackers or dogs barking or crickets or little frogs, if you go up the mountain Villa, which is on that picture there. If you go, you can, you can do a hike to the top it takes about eight hours to the highest point. And it can be pretty quiet there but you can still hear a lot of the wind yet most face quickly lights up when he talks about his home country. Its people and its nature and its and to nature. And and yeah, so that view of the massive flows of the Amazon, I would say is one of my favorites.

2:02  
GMO says Venezuela has some of the most beautiful scenery on the planet, even one of the seven wonders of the world. But today, what we mostly hear are the horrific realities its people face every day turned out to the tense situation in Venezuela. As of 2016, its Congress officially declared a humanitarian health crisis. Venezuela was the world's fourth richest economy in the 50s. But today, it ranks lowest on safety, access to basic utilities, and health care.

2:38  
I father is a surgeon and has been for over 40 years now. He had to get his kidney removed, and was in the hospital and serious condition.

2:53  
To get the most dad needed a specific medication that was nowhere to be found. hustling to find things like food and medication in Venezuela has become a job. A lot of it is done through social media.

3:07  
And the people in Venezuela already have WhatsApp groups dedicated specifically to finding medications, nationally and internationally. And they also have Venezuelan people that have migrated to countries such as Panama, the United States, Spain, Colombia, that have what they call friendly pharmacies that offer services to Venezuelan people and are willing to mail and have ways that you can pay them in foreign currency or otherwise, like they sort of have managed. So it has become sort of an international trade of medications, you know,

3:51  
through these networks and friends of friends, yet him on his siblings did what they could to find the medication their dad needed on time.

4:00  
My sister of course, she has mental health issues. So it's she takes a lot of medications and a lot of them cannot be found. So I think one of my sisters is bringing them from Colombia or Spain. I just think that she happened to be traveling and through someone that's that happened to be going to Venezuela will be delivering those those medications to me Venezuela, the way I left it does not exist anymore. Nothing that I left behind is the same anymore. Even the name of the country is not the flag is not the I mean, it was just it's like a different place. With a hardships people have become different. They're the personalities there. And in certain ways I see their negative, you know, they didn't used to be like that.

4:56  
My name is Rebecca sir Fatty, my mad community leader

5:00  
Last month, Rebecca sarfati and her activist community group held a small charity concert in downtown Toronto. They partnered with the UNHCR to raise funds for Venezuelan refugees, and those struggling back home

5:14  
I feel when you have a good cause to follow. Good people will follow you.

5:20  
Rebecca says that as soon as she arrived in Canada, she began to look for others that wanted to follow her dream to help Venezuela

5:29  
I just came across some musicians and some dancers all you know what, let's get together, do something for a country. Any of us can be a refugee. We don't look in a particular way we can be professionals, we can be actors, musicians, whatever, we can become successful in any country we are as a refugee. Later, as a resident of that country.

5:50  
Guillermo was one of the musicians at the charity event. He and his band play Venezuelan music, he said that he wanted to showcase the sweet and humane side of Venezuela

6:00  
and the community a couple of the members that sang there are medical doctors. And because they do not speak the language, English or didn't speak English, and they can't practice medicine, they have had to find other ways to make a living like playing music, or even worse, some of them are depending on their children to be able to survive to sustain themselves.

6:32  
My idea was yes, maybe I finally leave in there. Find a good job.

6:37  
This is said here Suarez. He is a 29 year old Venezuelan, who moved to Toronto in 2012 said he already had jobs lined up after graduating from university in Venezuela. Just one week after graduation, he and his family were on a plane to Toronto, even though his parents had been doctors in Venezuela. They were not allowed to practice in Canada.

7:03  
And at the day, I was the only one in the family that had a decent level of English. So my parents a need to study their English. My sister was just focused on their university, she she enrolled in university, and my younger sister was in high school. So it was up to me, was it me? Yeah. To start making some money for living,

7:27  
sit here said that despite all the negative things he noticed in his country, he didn't want to leave it behind

7:34  
Venezuela for all Venezuelan people is its currency, it was considered at the time to be the most beautiful country. So if you ask any minister, they will tell you, the best country in the world the most beautiful.

8:06  
And this is why Guillermo and his family decided to move back to Venezuela in 2006. But when he got there, he started noticing some red flags. He said that the government was becoming increasingly authoritarian. The following year, President Chavez shut down the country's most famous opposition news outlet

8:27  
you know what under the zendo case icon says young cilia covering matters. So the consortium, the television cover matters. So

8:38  
then that's when they close to Caracas to Louisiana. I took part on the protests and I almost got killed. So after that, we decided that it wasn't a safe place for us. And for the kids. I almost died in that protests. Shorter, smoke nerf guys.

9:01  
On his way back to Canada, the Venezuelan army pulled him off the plane. They questioned him for owning a book that openly opposed communist ideals.

9:11  
They open my bags, and the Army National Guard said what is so well you can read? It is what it is. It was scary. Because once you were there, I mean, I didn't know if they were gonna let me back on my two kids. My wife were on the plane and I didn't know what they wanted from me.

9:30  
More than 4 million Venezuelans have left their country since 2015. Venezuela was among the top 10 countries for new asylum claims in Canada from January to June of this year.

9:44  
Nothing is like I imagined you would have been in terms of having my own family without their grandparents and all that. I wanted them to play in the same beaches that I played. I wanted them to visit the same places that I New, and that's not possible. And so I hope that one day, some of that could be possible. I named my daughter Rama. Rama is one of the mountains in the Amazon that we spoke about earlier. So one day, I would like to take the whole family to a safe, prosperous Venezuela, where we can do a beautiful Trek Into the Amazon jungle with my family, and climb the top of Mount Rainier.

10:32  
For the Ryerson documentary unit, I'm Alisa Santa

Transcribed by https://otter.ai