Canada should increase aid to Cuba and help end U.S. sanctions

The Christian Centre for Reflection and Dialogue - Cuba, delivers healthy, tasty food by bicycle trolleys in Cardenas to over 100 people daily. Those receiving the food often live alone, lack family support, live with disabilities and/or are seniors.

Call on the Canadian government to increase food and medical aid to Cuba and to press the United States to ease its sanctions

Take Action Now

Canadian churches, trade unions and other non-governmental organizations are working together to encourage the government of Canada to increase aid to Cuba in this time of exceptional need and to press the United States to ease its sanctions.

Cuba is still suffering an economic slump provoked by the COVID pandemic. Effects of the downturn are magnified by the decades-long imposition of sanctions (sometimes referred to as the “embargo” or the “blockade”) by the United States. Between 2007 and 2022, Cuba has dropped 30 places in the Human Development Index (from 53 in 2007 to 83 in 2022).

In 2024 UNICEF placed Cuba—for the first time—as a country where a third of the country’s children are living in poverty. This year, again for the first time, Cuba requested support from the World Food Program for powdered milk for children under seven.

What’s Happening in Cuba
Cuban partner organizations and recent visitors say conditions in Cuba today are much more difficult than in the early 1990s when the implosion of the Soviet Union led to a massive deterioration in living standards. The pandemic shuttered the tourism industry, a main source of revenue used to acquire food, medicines and fuel from abroad. Cuba has also suffered a series of hurricanes, droughts and floods, leading to lost crops and food shortages. Punitive U.S. policies under both Trump and Biden have also reversed the many gains delivered by the Obama administration.

Try to imagine what living conditions are like for the average Cuban:

  • Daily power outages
  • Spending 70% of income on food
  • 10% of the people lack sufficient water
  • Cuba imports 80% of its food as national production dropped
  • Cuba lacks 24,000 teachers in the 2024-25 school year
  • Insufficient fuel means fewer garbage trucks and buses
  • Inflation rate of 31%
  • Ration book supplies cut drastically: no coffee, bread rolls reduced from 80 to 60 grams
  • 80% of food imported
  • Monthly salary of US$16-23, enough for 3 kilos or powdered milk or a tray of 30 eggs
  • Pension for seniors is about US$5
  • Friends and family are leaving: 1 million since 2020, mostly from 15-49 age cohort
  • Hospital conditions have deteriorated: the infant mortality rate has increased 50% in recent years; 12,000 doctors (with a similar number of nurses) have left the profession.

Canada should increase efforts to provide food, medicines and medical supplies to Cuba, and do so both directly and through aid groups. It should also press the Biden administration to ease sanctions and to remove Cuba from its list of “international sponsors of terrorism.”

Resources

United Church support for farmers with disabilities in Cuba
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Flfb2ax8Sj8&list=PLQDu-SgFb3RhYlxVfQOxbo1DjO9ezW-sR&index=8&t=191s

Biden’s Cuba Policy Leaves the Island in Wreckage
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/where-to-watch-the-debateand-a-dispatch

Crisis in Cuba: a role for Canada?
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/crisis-in-cuba-a-role-for-canada

TAKE ACTION
Call on Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly and the Government of Canada to:

  • scale up efforts to provide immediate food, medicines and medical supplies to Cuba
  • use its influence with the United States to encourage the easing of sanctions
  • urge the Biden administration to remove Cuba from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, as the Obama administration had done in 2015.
  • The Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs
  • The Honourable Michael Chong (Conservative Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs)
  • Député Stéphane Bergeron (Porte-parole du bloc québécois en matière d’Affaires étrangères)
  • MP Heather McPherson (NDP Foreign Affairs Critic)
  • Sylvie Bédard (Director General, Central America and Caribbean Bureau, Global Affairs Canada)
  • Marianick Tremblay (Canadian Ambassador to Cuba)
  • MP Anita Vandenbeld (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Development)
To The Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs,

I write to encourage the Government of Canada to increase emergency assistance to Cuba in this time of exceptional need, and to expand diplomatic efforts to ease sanctions imposed by the United States.

In the wake of the three-year COVID-19 pandemic, the Cuban economy weakened dramatically, with dire impacts for the Cuban people. While tourists have begun to return, effects of the pandemic linger and are magnified by the decades-long imposition of sanctions (sometimes referred to as the “embargo” or the “blockade”) by the United States. Worse still, the Trump administration put Cuba on its list of State Sponsors of Terrorism and the Biden administration has kept it there, making financial transfers—even family remittances—and trade even more difficult.

On April 13, 2023, Canadian churches, trade unions and aid organizations wrote to you and to the development minister to ask:

• That Canada use its significant capacity to scale up its efforts to provide immediate food, medicines and medical supplies to Cuba, and to do so directly through bilateral government to government relations, through multilateral fora like the United Nations and through Canadian and Cuban civil society initiatives. In particular, there is urgent need for powdered milk and other milk products, basic grains and antibiotics.

• That Canada use its influence with the United States to encourage the easing of sanctions, at least to the levels they were during the second Obama administration, before the Trump administration imposed new sanctions or re-imposed older ones.

• That the Canadian government use its influence to urge the Biden administration to remove Cuba from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, as the Obama administration had done in 2015. The Trump administration’s decision to return Cuba to the list in 2021 has only produced harm to the people of Cuba, limiting even financial support from individuals to family members and transfers among non-governmental organizations.
 
I support these calls and urge the Government of Canada to act now. These proposals would assist the Cuban population as it struggles through the most difficult period it has faced in the past sixty years. Given our close bilateral ties on the one hand, and the huge difficulties faced by the Cuban population on the other, any humanitarian and diplomatic support for the Cuban people would be enormously helpful and would benefit Canadian relations in the region. We remain convinced that constructive engagement is a better approach than wilful and harmful isolation.

Sincerely,
[your first name] [your last name]
[your email address]
[your postal code]