Canada faces challenge as it navigates growing calls to help Cuba amid U.S. aggression

The canadian river authorities is in a attach as it faces growing calls to facilitate republic of cuba while the U.S. Government attempts to choke off the island nation's fuel supplies.

Interim NDP Leader Don Davies and Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet have both called on the Liberal government to send immediate aid to Cuba, where people are facing blackouts and shortages of food, fuel and medicine.

The U.S. Has cut off oil supplies from Venezuela, Cuba's main supplier, and U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to hit countries with heavy tariffs if they send fuel, while saying the Cuban government appears "ready to fall."

As one of the few western nations that has remained friendly with Cuba since its 1959 revolution, and having done so in the face of long-standing U.S. Blockades, Canada is now in a position where stepping up could damage an already tenuous relationship with the U.S.

Dominic LeBlanc, Canada's minister for U.S. Trade and intergovernmental affairs, says an announcement on humanitarian aid to Cuba is coming soon. 

"They have to come up with a solution," said David Carment, a professor of international affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa.

"I would have thought that they would have already announced humanitarian assistance, but they haven't. I mean, that's the obvious and most pressing need."

Carment says Canada is one of Cuba's top trading partners, doing about $1-billion worth of two-way trade annually.

Cuba is Canada's top market in the Caribbean, and Canada is the country's largest source of tourists, as well as its second-biggest source of direct investment, according to the Government of Canada.

Some have called on Canada to send fuel, as Russia has pledged to do, but Carment says that's not a move the government can make.

That's because Canada's oil is owned by private companies, and most of them have operations in the U.S., making it unlikely those companies would risk facing economic punishment from the Trump administration.

In the House of Commons last week, Davies referenced Prime Minister Mark Carney's January speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, saying that supporting Cuba "in the face of aggressive U.S. Imperialism" would give heft to Carney's now-famous speech that urged middle powers to stand up to intimidation by superpowers.

Carment says Cuba is a "test case" for the Davos speech.

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Carment says Canada needs to send the message that commitments it has historically made, including to Cuba, will not be undermined by a U.S. Administration that "is determined to lay claim to basically an entire hemisphere, and dictate how other countries should behave and who they can work with and so on."

On the other hand, with upcoming talks to review the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement on trade, he says Carney is well aware that upsetting Trump could have major consequences.

Carment says any action has to be undertaken in partnership with equally effective countries, like Mexico, Spain and Brazil, and notes that those countries, as well as China, Russia and others, have committed to sending aid.

"To lose sight of this particular crisis would be probably a fundamental error for Carney, because there is a reputational cost here for not acting in some way, shape or form," Carment said.

But Canada has not sent aid when Cuba has faced hardships in recent years, says Mark Manger, a political science professor at the University of Toronto. He says he doesn't think that needs to change in this moment.

"It's not like this was a functioning country before the U.S. Enforced an oil embargo, and I don't see why Canada would be obliged or advised to do anything now, when we didn't do anything a year ago when there were blackouts," he said.

Manger says Canada should be careful not to do anything that could help Cuba's "dictatorial regime" cling to power, and worries the government would have a say in how the aid was allocated.

Canada should also be wary of being seen to side with Russia, he says. Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke out in favour of Cuba and called the U.S. Oil restrictions unacceptable when he met with Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez on Wednesday.

Manger says the time for Canada to step in would be if the situation spirals to a point where the Cuban government "effectively collapses."

Some have suggested the most effective way to help Cubans is through NGOs, to avoid money going to the government.

Some Canadian groups have already been working together, independent of the government, to send items like medical supplies, canned food, powdered milk, rice, beans, cooking oil, generators and mattresses.

Karen Dubinsky, a historian at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., who studies the relationships between Canadians and Cubans, came back this week from a month-long research trip to Havana.

She says while Cuba has been in "serious economic decline" for years, exacerbated in part its own government's actions and by the COVID-19 pandemic, the effects of Trump's recent moves were "palpable and immediate," making a bad situation more dire.

"People aren't able to go to work because there's literally no public transportation," she said. Dubinsky said eight-hour blackouts were not uncommon in Havana, and the situation is "much worse" in smaller towns and the countryside.

Canadian airlines have suspended flights to the island, citing fuel shortages, while some European airlines have added a refuel stop in nearby countries.

Dubinsky says Canada should not hesitate to send aid, noting Canadians and Cubans have a long history of working together and many families go back and forth between the two countries.

"The fact that Canada has this sensitive relationship with with a very bellicose U.S. Doesn't strike me as a good reason not to continue to work with countries with whom we have a cooperative relationship, a cooperative history," she said.

Digital Writer

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