The government of radical leftist Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sent a Canadian warship to visit Havana, Cuba, this weekend, a move detractors told Breitbart News on Monday is “morally and strategically unjustifiable” given the Castro regime’s close ties to Canada’s enemies.
“I consider this decision a ratification of the failure and inconsistency of the Prime Minister’s foreign policy on Cuba,” Michael Lima Cuadra, the director of the Canadian human rights organization Democratic Spaces, told Breitbart News.
Democratic Spaces, founded by the Cuban-Canadian researcher, focuses on pressuring the traditionally Cuba-friendly Canadian government to confront and condemn the over half-century of human rights atrocities the Communist Party has committed and continues to do so against its people.
Russian Marines standing on top of the Russian nuclear-powered submarine Kazan (R), part of the Russian naval detachment visiting Cuba, watch Canada’s HMCS Margaret Brooke, the second Harry DeWolf-class offshore patrol vessel for the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN), upon arrival in Havana Harbor on June 14, 2024. (YAMIL LAGE/AFP via Getty Images)
“Cuba is more repressive today than decades ago and has the highest number of political prisoners in the Americas and its inner power circle actively collaborates with regimes like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s in the asymmetric war against Ukraine (in its propaganda efforts, diplomatically and militarily),” Lima Cuadra observed.
Canadian Joint Operations Command confirmed on June 12 that the Canadian Navy would send the HMCS Margaret Brooke to Havana “in recognition of the long-standing bilateral relationship between Canada and Cuba.”
Marking the Royal Canadian Navy’s first visit to Havana since 2016, HMCS Margaret Brooke will dock at Havana as it begins its return sail after a successful deployment in the Caribbean basin. 2/2 pic.twitter.com/ghvT39YiXF
— Canadian Joint Operations Command (@CJOC_COIC) June 12, 2024
The Cuban government, in its 65th year under the control of the draconian Castro family, staged a welcoming event on June 14 for the ship, which state television described as an “opportunity to celebrate and reinforce the bilateral relationship.”
“The presence of the fleet at the capital of the largest of the Antilles is a sign of the quality of the bilateral ties of cooperation on the 50th anniversary of their establishment,” the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba, Granma, proclaimed on Saturday.
The newspaper quoted Canada’s ambassador to Havana, Geoff Gartshore, calling his presence at the arrival of the ship a “great privilege for us.”
“We are very grateful for the warm welcome to the fleet,” he reportedly added.
The visit prompted widespread outrage among Canada’s conservatives, who noted that Trudeau has prioritized supporting Ukraine against the ongoing invasion of its territory by Russia, while Cuba has actively supported Moscow and has reportedly swindled young men into fighting in that war theater.
“While our troops are starved of resources, Trudeau spends defence budget sending a Canadian naval ship to Cuba alongside the Russian navy to honour Cuba’s brutal communist government,” the head of the Conservative Party, Pierre Poilievre, said in a statement this weekend, “proving he wasn’t kidding when he said he admires communist dictatorships. Reckless, radical & dangerous.”
The Conservatives’ foreign policy chief, lawmaker Michael Chong, emphasized that “Cuba and Russia are not allies of Canada, noting that Trudeau has publicly expressed admiration for late dictator and mass murderer Fidel Castro.
“Remember when Trudeau visited Cuba in November 2016?” Chong recalled. “He publicly embraced communist leader Raul Castro and his handpicked successor, Miguel Diaz-Canel, called Cuba an ‘ally’ of Canada and tried to get an audience with Fidel Castro – which was denied.”
Castro died that year, leaving the country in the hands of his executioner brother, Raúl. Trudeau reacted to the news by praising Castro as a “legendary revolutionary.”
“Both Mr. Castro’s supporters and detractors recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people who had a deep and lasting affection for ‘el Comandante,'” Trudeau said, a demonstrably false statement.
In response to the outrage, the Canadian government attempted to rebrand the visit not as a statement of friendship and support to the Castro regime, but as an attempt to stare down the Russian government. Havana had another military visitor last week: a Russian naval deployment featuring a nuclear-powered submarine.
“The Canadian ship visited Havana to demonstrate Canada’s presence, naval capability and commitment to safe and open waters in the Americas,” Defense Minister Bill Blair said on Monday, contradicting Ambassador Gartshore’s comments.
“The deployment … sends a very clear message that Canada has a capable and deployable military and we will not hesitate to do what is required to protect our national interest,” Blair claimed. “Canadian Armed Forces will continue to track the movements and activities of the Russian ship. Presence is deterrence. We were present.”
Blair claimed he did not consider Cuba an ally of Canada’s, according to the Globe and Mail.
Lima Cuadra, the human rights activist, told Breitbart News that a friendly naval visit necessarily tells the world that Canada considers the repressive communist regime a friend.
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“This decision helps legitimize and actively collaborates with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba, whose Minister, Álvaro López Miera, is on the United States Department of Treasury’s sanctions list for the role of the Armed Forces Red Berets in the crackdown on pro-democracy protests on July 11, 2021,” he explained. “A consistent, values-based Canadian foreign policy would take a similar approach to high-ranking officials in the Cuban Armed Forces and Interior Ministry as it does with Belarus.”
“It is morally and strategically unjustifiable for the Canadian government to continue considering Cuba as an ally,” he concluded, “while endorsing tourism and investment in an island controlled by a regime actively collaborating with Russia in the war against Ukraine.”
Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat, the coordinator of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, recalled to Breitbart News that, contrary to the friendly visit this weekend, the Cuban government has posed a threat to Canada in the recent past.
“Trudeau has decided to reward the Castro Regime’s participation in directed energy attacks against Canadian diplomats and the sending of Cuban troops to fight under Russian orders in Ukraine,” he said, “by having the Canadian Navy fly its flags in honor of a vicious regime.”
In 2019, Cuba was implicated in the mysterious documenting of what appeared to be unexplained brain trauma in some diplomats, most of them American but some Canadians. In January 2019, the Canadian government announced a plan to reduce its diplomatic presence in Havana after documented 14 individuals suffering from unexplained “concussion-like” symptoms on the island.
The Castro regime, which dismissed the phenomenon entirely, has yet to suffer any consequences for whatever role it may have played in the “Havana syndrome” mystery, and its origins remain unclear, as more recent reports have used spurious evidence to blame Russia, rather than the Cuban government.
