This article originally appeared in The Hamilton Spectator.
By Michael Lima, Isabelle Terranova and Sarah Teich, March 18, 2026
When U.S. forces captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, 32 Cuban soldiers died protecting him.
Havana declared two days of national mourning. For anyone paying attention, the episode was clarifying: Cuba is an active participant in a global authoritarian project, and Canada has spent decades looking the other way.
A new report from Human Rights Action Group and Democratic Spaces documents what this project actually looks like. The findings should alarm anyone who believes Canada stands for universal human rights and democratic governance, because our Cuba policy suggests otherwise.
Canada has sanctioned 124 Venezuelans and 35 Nicaraguans in response to human rights violations, yet not a single Cuban official despite long-standing and ongoing human rights abuses. While Canada banned Russian state broadcaster RT from Canadian airwaves in 2022, Cuba’s state-owned propaganda channel — Cubavisión Internacional — remains authorized for distribution despite formal complaints to the CRTC regarding its rebroadcasting of RT content.
And although former prime minister Justin Trudeau testified at Canada’s foreign interference inquiry that he believes Canada engages with Cuban civil society like it does everywhere else, pro-democracy activists on the island report the Canadian Embassy has not engaged with their organizations in more than a decade.
These are not minor policy inconsistencies. These double standards reflect a fundamental failure to reckon with Cuba’s authoritarianism.
As our report documents, the interrelationships between Cuba and other dictatorships are extensive, and the cost of failing to address them high.
For instance, Ukrainian intelligence estimates 20,000 Cuban nationals have been recruited for Russia’s war in Ukraine in a process amounting to human trafficking. By facilitating the recruitment of Cuban mercenaries for Russia, Havana helps Moscow replenish its forces while limiting domestic political costs, deepening authoritarian co-operation, and undermining international law with serious consequences for global security.
Meanwhile, China has provided Cuba with surveillance technology and has access to signals intelligence facilities on the island capable of reaching the U.S. Further, Cuban intelligence personnel deployed to Venezuela have been instrumental in training Venezuelan security forces in surveillance and crowd control and in co-ordinating crackdowns on protesters.
This collaboration is well-documented and available to anyone willing to look. The question is why Canada has preferred not to.
Part of the answer is historical. Canada maintained relations with Cuba throughout the Cold War, positioning itself as an alternative to American isolation and arguing that engagement would foster reform. However, 65 years later Cuba’s human rights record has not improved, its authoritarian alliances have not weakened, and its political prisoners are more numerous than ever. Even Lloyd Axworthy, a principal architect of constructive engagement during his tenure as Canada’s foreign minister, later acknowledged its shortcomings, admitting Canada “gave (Cuba) an opportunity but they didn’t come through the door.”
This does not mean that targeted engagement is futile. In the current humanitarian crisis, Canada must distinguish between delivering critical aid to the Cuban people and sustaining a military elite that represses dissent and fuels authoritarianism.
Canada has the tools to accomplish this. Targeted sanctions can be imposed on perpetrators of gross human rights violations, Canadian diplomats can engage Cuban human rights defenders, and the government can exercise leverage to push Havana to legalize independent civil society organizations.
The Cuban people are living under one of the world’s oldest and most repressive dictatorships. Canada must stop pretending their government is something it is not.
Canada has a choice. It can continue exempting Cuba from the principles it claims to uphold, or it can align its actions with its stated values. Our report makes clear that the cost of continued incoherence is not just moral; it is strategic. It is long past time for Ottawa to reckon with that.
