Canada must support Cuba

"You cannot ‘live within the lie’ of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.”

Castro toboggans in Gander

Scroll to the bottom to read a dispatch from Karen Dubinsky who is currently in Havana

There are currently 3000 Canadians in Cuba who are customers of Air Canada. Thousands more, likely, who flew down on Sunwing, Air Transat or WestJet. They are being evacuated and all future flights to be cancelled. Canadians love Cuba. According to the Cuban bureau of statistics, 754,000 Canadians visited the island in 2025, a drop from 2024 when that number was north of 800,000. For many of us Cuba is our go-to beach destination.

I use “us” loosely, as I’ve rarely taken a beach vacation. But I have been to Cuba before, in 2012 when I stayed at the Hotel Inglaterra for a week.

Here’s how the Government of Canada explains the relationship:

Over 1 million Canadians visited the island every year before the pandemic. Cuba is Canada’s top market in the Caribbean/Central American sub-region and is Canada’s largest merchandise export market in that region. Canada is Cuba’s second-largest source of direct investment with significant Canadian investment in mining, power, oil and gas, and some investments in renewable energy, agriculture/heavy equipment and tourism.

Our governments have had diplomatic relations for more than a century. Cuba opened its first diplomatic office in Canada in 1903, and after the Spanish-American war, Canadian banks rushed to get in on the new American territory. Canada refused to break ties after the Cuban Revolution, even though all other Latin American countries, save Mexico, did. Pierre Eliot Trudeau and Fidel Castro had a close relationship.

Trudeau once even tried to paddle a rowboat from Florida to Cuba. (He failed.)

Trudeau was the first NATO leader to speak in Cuba, in 1976, something that shocked Trudeau’s critics in Canada.

René-Lévesque interviews Castro

The connections between our two countries are deep. And yet, now that Donald Trump is turning the screws to Cuba and to Cubans, where are our leaders?

Seemingly nowhere. Trump has tightened the embargo on the island and threatened that any country that breaks it will face steep US tariffs. They have starved Cuba off Venezuelan oil, triggering the airlines to cancel all flights to Cuba as they cannot guarantee that there will be enough jet fuel to make it home.

Mark Carney has seemingly said nothing about this crisis, despite our long history with Cuba.

In the Toronto Star, Jim Stanford argues that Canada must do three things:

First, Carney should express principled opposition to Trump’s attacks — against both Cuba, and any neutral third parties caught in his crossfire.

Second, he should join other Latin American countries in a united defence of free commerce in the Caribbean and throughout the hemisphere.

Third, we should expand our bilateral commercial, investment, and humanitarian ties with Cuba.

Canada is a global top oil producer, and we can’t even help one of our historic allies, the playground of a million Canadians, because we’re afraid of Donald Trump?

Sure, tariffs have hit many Canadian industries hard. But Trump is 80% bluster. People’s lives are at risk and Canada could pay a key role in not only helping Cubans out, but also in breaking the hold that Trump is trying to maintain across the Americas.

Mark Carney’s Davos speech was heralded as being critical and urgent. In that speech, he correctly identifies, “More recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, and supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot ‘live within the lie’ of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.”

And yet, here we have this exact thing playing out in real time, with thousands of Canadians directly impacted and millions of Cubans paying the price of a madman in the Oval Office. Canada, one of Cuba’s closest friends, has the means to lend our support.

But we can’t. Carney’s speech was brilliant because it was clear and accurate. He named the exact bind that Canada finds itself in, and argues that we have to resist it. Except, he himself cannot resist it. “You cannot ‘live within the lie’ of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.” He’s right. We cannot. And yet, Carney’s actions show us that he’s going to try as hard as he can to keep living within this lie.

REPORT FROM HAVANA

February 11 2026

Today I met Madame Marianik Tremblay, the Canadian ambassador to Cuba, who generously received my book on Cuban Canadian cultural ties. The irony of the moment was overwhelming. Two days ago Canada ceased all air traffic to Cuba due to the shortage of oil caused by the Trump administration’s recent blockade. Canada’s actions -the first country to do so - are the exact opposite of the history of cooperative relations in education, music and development assistance my book documents.

Canadian media has focused on unhappy tourists But accompanying me on this visit to the embassy was a Cuban doctoral student at Queen’s University who helped me research this book. His plans to celebrate his wedding with his Canadian partner in Havana next week came to a crashing halt when the bride, her parents, and dozens of friends were suddenly unable to join him and his family in Havana.

Flight cancellations are going to affect Cuban Canadian family plans, musical, artistic and student exchanges, business relationships. The oil stranglehold is obviously going to cause further hardship for Cuban citizens. As Trump himself has explained, this is the point.

Why did Canadian airlines not choose the option, as European airlines have, of refuelling in adjacent countries? When will the Canadian government announce a humanitarian aid initiative? Or send oil? Whatever one’s views on the current Cuban government- and there are divergent opinions among Cubans on the need for change - surely it is up to Cubans themselves, not foreign bullies, to decide on their future.

If you are concerned please write your MP, PM Carney, Foreign Minister Anand.

Karen Dubinsky is Professor Emerita at Queen’s University. She recently published Strangely, Friends: A History of Cuban Canadian Encounters (Between the Lines).